Institut Pasteur

The discovery of this parasite begins with two French scientists running around in the Tunisian desert trying to catch some potato-shaped rodents.

One of these men was the distinguished Charles Nicolle, the director of the Pasteur Institute in Tunis.

Under his leadership, the non-profit research organization would rival Paris in its scientific discoveries.

Soon, he would learn how typhus is transmitted and take the first steps toward developing a vaccine for the disease.

Ya me había asustado, dice.

Pregunta: ¿Están transmitiendo desde El Pirobano o desde el Instituto Pasteur?

No, desde-

Dice Lucas de Rosario

was they basically, like, I just realized that they existed today.

What is this? Collaborates with the Pasteur Institute? Okay, fine.

But they're doing a bunch of, like, preclinical presentations at this stroke congress, World Stroke Congress.

But I saw it, and I was like, that's super cool.

One was the Institute of Applied Biology.

That was a research center where people who were-- came and founded that in the 1940s were almost all Jewish scientists from the Institute Pasteur, the Koch Center-- uh, the Koch Center in Germany 'cause they didn't want to get killed by the Germans.

So they had all these grand men and women there.

I was a young person, not terribly bright, uh, very naive.

Sí.

Y llevarlo junto con él al Instituto Pasteur.

Exactamente.

Es importante no equivocarse de perro.

[risas] Dice.

Bue.

Eh, hay que identificar al escorpión que lo picó y llevarlo al Instituto Pasteur o a Butantan.

Pero ¿y cómo sabe? ¿De dónde sale? ¿Usted va a agarrar el escorpión?

I think I'm one of the few people that are still alive who lived through that.

It would take until 1983 for French scientists at the Pasteur Institute to be able to figure out that this mysterious illness was a virus.

The news broke.

It was reported that HIV was most prominent among gay men.

The cause of the epidemic was still entirely unknown, and whichever nation found it first would claim an immense scientific glory.

France sent a 36-year-old doctor, thin, quiet, who had once left Paris to work as a physician aboard long-haul merchant ships before returning to work at the Pasteur Institute, Alexandre Yersin.

On the other side, Imperial Japan immediately dispatched a team of its own, led by Kitasato Shibasaburo, the scientist whom all of Europe had hailed for discovering the tetanus bacillus.

The race became one of the most gripping duels in the history of science.

Both men had seen the bacillus, but Kitasato's samples were contaminated with Pneumococci Mixtin, while Yersin's were pure, his description precise, and all later comparative work stood on his foundation.

The bacterium's name was chosen with almost diplomatic care.

It was first placed in the genus Pasteurella, named after the Pasteur Institute under the name Pasteurella pestis.

Only in 1944, when both discoverers were dead, did bacteriology rename the genus Yersinia to honor the man whose descriptions had become the standard.