1 janv. 1880 - Louis Pasteur: Germs and Vaccinations

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Pasteur knew about the work done by Edward Jenner regarding smallpox and reasoned that if a vaccine could be found for smallpox, then a vaccine could be found for all diseases. Pasteur did not know how Jenner’s vaccination worked, so he proceeded to search for a chicken cholera vaccine using a process of trial and error.
During the late 1870s, chicken cholera was devastating French farming. Pasteur was employed to investigate the disease and attempted to develop a vaccine by injecting chickens with different strengths of it, without success. In 1880, Pasteur forgot one of his cultures of chicken cholera, which had become old and was weakened severely. Pasteur took two groups of chickens and inoculated one with the old culture, before exposing both to a fresh culture of chicken cholera germs. The chickens that had been given the old culture survived, and those that hadn't did not. Pasteur concluded that the bodies of the inoculated chickens had used the weaker strain of the old culture to form a defence against the more powerful germs in the fresher culture, developing an immunity against the disease. Pasteur had invented a chicken cholera vaccine.

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