Quality Control and the Politics of Serum Production in France

Abstract

Louis Pasteur died on 28 September 1895 at the Pasteur Institute’s facility at Garches outside Paris. Today, the visitor who makes the journey to this quiet Parisian suburb is reminded of Pasteur’s prominent place in the history of French science by a memorial plaque mounted on the wall of the former cavalry stables. The founder of microbiology, at least according to the French version of this history, Pasteur revolutionized the conception of infectious disease and paved the way for the major therapeutic success stories of twentieth-century medicine, from antisepsis to antibiotics. Pasteur’s room at Garches, preserved in the state it was in when he died, is bathed in a calm silence broken only by the occasional passage of a train on the tracks that run behind the building, or the honking of one of the geese on the grounds of the estate. It is easy to imagine Louis Pasteur living out the end of his life in this tranquil atmosphere, with the repose of his final weeks interrupted only by visits from friends, colleagues and relatives coming to pay their last respects to the great hero of French science. But in fact, the tranquillity that envelops the buildings at Garches today is a far cry from the atmosphere that reigned at the time of Pasteur’s death. In September 1895, production of the diphtheria serum, the largest project the Pasteur Institute had ever undertaken, was in full swing at the site. According to notes found in the administrative notebooks, the Institute produced some 7500 litres of blood containing serum for the treatment of diphtheria in 1895, a volume not equalled again until 1899, and then for all the sera produced by the Institute.¹