7
Lost in Translation
It is widely known the royal families of Europe are quite inbred, as evidenced by occasional maladies such as hemophilia and porphyria, which have made for rather colorful storytelling over the centuries. Despite and occasionally because of these relationships, European peace was significantly and consistently disrupted over disputes pertaining to royal succession. One such disagreement forever changed the course of history.
As the new year of 1870 dawned in Europe, things were looking up for the relatively new state of Prussia (a territory once ruled by Teutonic knights that remained a paper lion until the 17th century). Just four years before, Kaiser Wilhelm I had appointed Otto von Bismarck as prime minister, and this brilliant, albeit ruthless, strategist had begun a conquest to raise the minor kingdom into a major power.1 The kingdom’s power had grown following a sharp but decisive war with the fading Austrian-Habsburg Empire in that same year of 1866, which had netted the Prussian kingdom additional lands and sway over still-independent territories in its backyard.
In 1868, the Spanish “Glorious Revolution” had deposed and exiled Queen Isabella II as the first step in a process of liberalization that would ensure instability and political uncertainty on the Iberian Peninsula for the next century.2 The provisional government of Spain had lacked leadership and had soon been seeking a new monarch with hereditary ties to the Spanish crown. One candidate had been Leopold, Prince of Hohenzollern, whose wife had also been a princess of Portugal. However, Leopold’s potential ascendency to the throne of Spain had been strongly opposed by the French Napoleon III, who’d threatened war as he’d feared contending with Hohenzollern rivals to the east (Prussia) and west (Spain).
While negotiations among the different candidates by the Spanish Cortes Generales had been underway, the French had continued to pressure Prussia against any consideration of contending for the Spanish throne, culminating in a seemingly innocent encounter on July 13, 1870. During a stroll on his summer vacation in the resort spa in Bad Ems, Kaiser Wilhelm was confronted by Vincent, Count Benedetti, the French ambassador to Prussia.3 Benedetti, working on behalf of Antoine Alfred Agenor, Duke of Gramont and French minister of foreign affairs under Emperor Napoleon III, challenged the Kaiser to renounce all current and future claims to the Spanish throne. During their walk together, the duke implied that a Prussian failure to abandon aspirations for the Spanish crown could trigger war. The Kaiser politely demurred from answering and shared the story with his secretary, Heinrich Abeken, who in turn relayed the account to Otto von Bismarck.
Bismarck, the cunning architect of Realpolitik, comprehended the propaganda value of the encounter at the resort and crafted an accurate but stilted account of the Ems encounter into a dispatch that was shared with the foreign office and later published for all the world to see. In relaying the encounter in what has become known as the “Ems telegram,” Bismarck utilized language that was crafty enough that a translation into French would reveal an insult to the French people by the Kaiser. This is not the only time that Franco-German translation skills will cause chaos in our story. Taking the bait, the French emperor took offense at the translation error, triggering a parliamentary referendum for war and mobilization of the military. Incensed, the French people demanded the parliament declare war, and their wishes were fulfilled on July 16.
The war was a complete rout and utter humiliation for France. A siege of Metz by the Prussians was decisive, as was a failed attempt by the French to relieve their embattled fortress. The relieving forces were utterly decimated at the Battle at Sedan in September (the future site of future misery in the Great War). Indeed, the Sedan debacle witnessed the capture of Napoleon III himself, further compounding the humiliation and triggering the creation of the French Third Republic. This third attempt at democracy was to be ended by another Germanic empire, then, later, by an equally successful invasion by Hitler’s Third Reich in 1940.
In January 1871, the Prussians were besieging Paris, and France ultimately capitulated. For a time, the government dissolved into disarray, known as the Paris Commune.4 This brief period was characterized by radicals taking to the streets and erecting barricades, triggering subsequent events including further inspiring a middle-aged Russian writer by the name of Karl Marx. Marx referred to the Paris Commune as the first example of the “dictatorship of the proletariat,” which was a profound compliment (despite the modern views of the word dictatorship)5 While the turmoil of the Paris Commune was pushed aside after a bloody week of street and barricade battles with the French regular army, its short existence inspired a young Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (better known as Lenin) to formulate the theory it might have succeeded had the Commune government been more heavy-handed and centralized.6
On the other hand, the Prussians succeeded in unifying many German-speaking territories into a single nation. They seized critical territories in the Alsace and Lorraine (which would breed future contention in the coming two world wars). The German star was ascendant and, likewise, German science was beginning to challenge French science led by the legendary Louis Pasteur.
A Marvelous Rivalry
While the battles between the powerful western European nations were fought, the proud nationalist Pasteur was in the south of France performing research on diseases of silkworms (a task not as menial as it might seem, given the economic value of the silk industry).7 In this task, Pasteur was assisted scientifically, as was often the case, by his wife, Marie, who helped him grow the silkworms and tabulate the findings. Despite his geographical isolation, Louis was closely monitoring the political situation, particularly since his son had been drafted into the army. Like many Frenchmen of his age, Pasteur was deeply and irreversibly pained by the humiliation suffered at the hands of the Prussians, and he would retain his prejudice against Germans throughout his remaining days. Meanwhile Robert Koch was still more than a decade from presenting his postulates and was serving as a surgeon in the Prussian army (though nowhere near the front lines). As a mirror image of Pasteur’s feelings of humiliation, Koch bathed in the national pride his fellow Prussians had achieved over the despised French.
The looming rivalry between the French, led by Pasteur, and the Germans, championed by the much younger Robert Koch, was not entirely nationalistic in nature. The rigid Koch, reflecting stereotypical Prussian attitudes, maintained that infectious organisms, such as bacteria and viruses, retained their character and behavior under all circumstances. This idea was applied by Koch to all bacteria discovered by himself or his team throughout a remarkable three-decade run from 1877 through 1906. In a mere thirty years, these organisms included the causes of anthrax, Staph and Strep infections, venereal diseases (syphilis and gonorrhea), typhoid fever, tuberculosis, cholera, diphtheria, tetanus, pneumonia, meningitis, food poisoning (including Salmonella, botulism, and E. coli), gangrene, dysentery, and paratyphoid.8
Like many scientists, Koch’s proudest achievement likely was his first: the discovery of the organism that caused anthrax. A few years after the Franco-Prussian War, Koch had been appointed as the ranking medical officer for Wöllstein (modern-day Wolsztyn, Poland), a sleepy municipality near the region Koch had served in during the war.9 The local dependence upon agriculture in general and cattle in particular led Koch to research the causes of a disease that had plagued domesticated animals from time immemorial. The etymology of the name of this disease, anthrax, reflects the Greek term for ‘coal’ and captures the black skin lesions associated with the disease. However, while many modern summaries of the history of anthrax credit Koch for the discovery of the causative organism in 1875, this feat was actually accomplished in 1850 by the physicians Casimir Davaine and Pierre Francois Olive Rayer.10 These Frenchmen had likewise contributed to agricultural microbiology by discovering the bacterial cause of glanders, a fatal disease of horses and donkeys (and occasionally people). Also, Davaine and Rayer’s work was heavily influenced by and directly supported by Louis Pasteur himself. Without
question, Koch certainly popularized the discovery of the bacterium that caused the disease and dramatically increased knowledge of anthrax, including the deadly transmission. In particular, Koch help described the bacteria’s insidious use of spores, tough particles that encapsulated the bacterium to protect it from harsh environmental conditions that would be lethal to bacteria exposed to the elements. These same spores were also more aerodynamic and allowed the infectious agent to spread among animals. Consequently, anthrax spores provided a combination of sanctuary from harm and a propulsion system that rendered it one of the most lethal dangers to agriculture (and as the American public witnessed in 2002, a favored tool of bioterrorists).
On the French side of the border, Pasteur and his team (and later Institute) were in the process of identifying the causes of some key diseases such as pertussis and rabies.11 However, the French rivals to Koch were more intent upon developing new ways to treat or prevent such diseases altogether. To accomplish this goal, Pasteur focused on harnessing the immune system in a manner that could recognize and remember foreign pathogens (or the toxins they use to wreak havoc on the body). While the Germans, led by Koch and Behring, pioneered the use of antitoxins and passive immunotherapy, the French were developing new generations of active immunity, or, as they are better known today, vaccines. In the end, the nationalistic antagonisms, compounded by the difference in languages and the very different scientific beliefs, worked to the advantage of the rest of the world and future generations. Indeed, the mixture of German identification of infectious agents and ever-improving vaccine technologies served all of society. Although the stories behind this rivalry are cringe-worthy at times, the personal antagonisms between Koch and Pasteur resulted in one of the most productive rivalries in history.
The rivalry between Koch and Pasteur began in earnest in 1878, when the more senior and highly regarded Pasteur began studying anthrax. Anthrax was a deep passion of Koch’s, and the Prussian took particular affront, as he believed the Frenchman was applying a fundamentally flawed and positively reckless approach to the study of his bacterium.12 Specifically, Pasteur believed in the process of attenuation, a weakening of pathogens that could render them non-infectious while retaining the ability to elicit an immune response. The potential existence of such plasticity in microbial character was anathema to Koch’s strongly held view that organisms remained constant under all circumstances. That Pasteur would contaminate his beloved anthrax with such a lurid approach created considerable resentments.
And contaminate he would. Pasteur proceeded to contaminate anthrax bacteria and its spores with a variety of different chemicals to determine if any of these might perturb its ability to cause disease. Pasteur was indeed successful, though the Frenchman did so by blatantly stealing the ideas of another Gallic scientist.
Jean Joseph Henri Toussaint was the son of a carpenter and a seamstress, who earned a degree as a veterinarian from the Ecole Nationale Veterinaire in Lyon in 1869.13 Shuttling between the southern French cities of Toulouse and Lyon, Toussaint conducted studies to earn a PhD on the subject of anthrax, which he completed in 1879, receiving 100,000 francs after winning the prestigious Breant Prize for his work on the subject.
In 1880, Toussaint began asking if anthrax might be weakened (attenuated) such that the bacteria were no longer dangerous but able to elicit protection from future infection.14 Within a year, he had successfully developed a rather complicated process that included treating the blood of infected animals to remove the clotting factors and then heating the sample to 55˚C for ten minutes in the presence of small amounts of phenol (which you may recall as the active ingredient found in Chloraseptic sore throat spray). By July 12 of that year, Toussaint had detailed his approach in a sealed envelope and safeguarded this secret with the venerable French Academy of Sciences. This might seem an almost paranoid response—from a man who was beginning to suffer the effects of a neurodegenerative disease—but it turns out to have been a prescient step. Toussaint then organized a unique public demonstration of his findings in August by exposing vaccinated sheep to an otherwise lethal dose of anthrax.15 The sheep survived and the sealed envelope revealed how the accomplishment had been achieved. These facts were presented to the regional Society for the Advancement of Science in Reims later that month. Toussaint further refined the phenol-based approach to improve his anthrax vaccine (for both large stock animals and for fowl). He then turned his attention to applying a similar strategy to the development of a tuberculosis vaccine.
Sadly, the next few years were not kind to Toussaint. The progression of his disease accelerated and his intellect failed, killing him in 1890 at the age of forty-three. At the same time, Pasteur was encroaching upon his work, albeit surreptitiously. In May 1881, it was Pasteur’s turn to conduct his own public anthrax vaccine experiment.16, 17 Pasteur announced that his vaccine consisted of anthrax bacteria that had simply been left open to the air for an extended period. He explained to a watching scientific community that time spent exposed to the elements had acted to attenuate the pathogenicity of the bacteria while not impeding their ability to elicit a protective immune response.18 This outcome was the result of yet another fortuitous accident that Pasteur chanced upon. Earlier in 1880, Pasteur’s associate, Emile Roux, had left some anthrax out in the air for many days before its intended use to invoke disease. However, the bacteria had become weakened and thereby helped promote the early concept of attenuation. Pasteur conducted a study, overseen by the French Academy of Sciences, at a farm in Seine-et-Marn, near Paris.19 Pasteur invited skeptical colleagues to view the immunization procedure and then infect sheep with anthrax, both of which worked as planned. All the vaccinated sheep survived, and the unfortunate few who had remained unvaccinated did not. This outcome, and its implications beyond anthrax to create additional vaccines for human diseases, enthralled the public and vaulted Pasteur to even greater fame.
What Pasteur failed to reveal in the days after his success in the farm field was publically exposed a half century later in the memoirs of one of his assistants, published in 1938.20 These documents revealed a fraud conducted by an icon of the French—and, indeed, the international—scientific community. Indeed, Pasteur’s intentional deception was even more shocking as its revelation came from his own nephew and implicated additional scientific legends in the conspiracy. Adrien Loir was the son of Marie Pasteur’s sister and had been given a job at the Pasteur Institute around the time of the fateful anthrax vaccine study. In his memoirs, Loir revealed that rather than simply exposing the anthrax to air as claimed, Pasteur had used a subtle modification of Toussaint’s approach using potassium dichromate in place of phenol.21 Pasteur’s approach had been borrowed from work by Charles Chamberland and Emile Roux, who both were more convinced that chemical attenuation was far superior to letting the elements do their damage over time. Given Louis’ dominance at the institute, these preeminent scientists were instructed not to reveal the truth until or unless a more effective air- and time-based attenuation approach was developed (which Pasteur remained convinced was a superior approach). Pasteur clearly remained aware of the significance of this deception, as his last will and testament instructed Chamberland and Roux to maintain their silence. Both scientists continued to maintain the deception, though Chamberland would later admit to the duplicity as an old man while composing his final memoirs.
Although Koch remained unaware of the potassium dichromate controversy throughout, he was nonetheless critical of Pasteur and his work. On one level, Koch took personal offense at the fact Pasteur’s work on anthrax referred to the causative organism as “bacteridia,” an arcane name dating back to Davaine, rather than the more specific name conferred by Koch, Bacillus anthracis.22, 23 As we have seen, Koch actively opposed the concept of attenuation and instead focused on killing the bacterium or its unique toxin. Indeed, this was the approach later favored by Behring in the generation of antitoxins meant to neutralize the toxins of anthrax, diphtheria, and other pathogens. With
in months after Pasteur’s highly publicized 1881 experiments with anthrax vaccines, Koch and two of his Berlin-based students, Georg Gaffky and Friedrich Loeffler, published a series of critical attacks on Pasteur, with accusations of sloppy technique and data.24 Pasteur responded to the critiques in a September 1882 talk at the International Congress of Hygiene and Demography held in Geneva.
Reminiscent of the translation challenge behind the “Ems Telegram” that helped launch the 1870 Franco-Prussian War, the talk was translated to Koch (who did not speak French). The interpreter misheard Pasteur’s use of the phrase “recueil allemande,” which refers to “a collection of German writing” (referring to the critiques from Koch, Gaffky, and Loeffler).25 Instead, the interpreter mistakenly heard “orgeuil allemande,” which translates into “German arrogance.” Koch was properly incensed, particularly as Pasteur’s composure was unsurprisingly calm (and interpreted as haughty) after unknowingly lobbing the slur. It is not clear what happened in the moments following, but clearly, the mistranslation was not corrected. We know this because Koch published a blistering attack against Pasteur in 1882, calling his data “useless” and questioning his credentials.26 Koch also made it clear that he viewed Pasteur’s Geneva talk to be a personal attack on his character and career. Pasteur, presumably still confused at his Teutonic colleague’s anger, struck back and defended himself in subsequent papers.
The professional rivalry raged on as both the Pasteur and Koch camps sent separate teams of investigators to Alexandria, Egypt, in August 1883 amidst an outbreak of cholera, a well-known disease with an unknown cause. The French delegation was led by Emile Roux and included Isidore Strau, Edmond Nocard, and Louis Thullier.27 The latter was one of Pasteur’s rising stars; despite being only twenty-seven, he’d helped in the creation and testing of the anthrax vaccines. Despite arriving before the Germans, the French team had no success in identifying the cause of cholera. However, they were more successful in isolating the organism than intended, because Thullier was struck down and killed by the disease on September 19, 1883. The grief-struck team packed their bags and left Alexandria to return Thullier’s body to Paris.
Between Hope and Fear Page 24
