Louis Pasteur

One of the few streets in Saigon,Vietnam that has not been renamed since colonial times is named in honour of Pasteur. Contemporary anatomists no longer believe that morphology alone can determine the functioning of the brain. A biographical film of his life has also been made, entitled The Story of Louis Pasteur. Further research was continued by the Soviet team, but the work on Lenin's brain was no longer advertised. In popular culture, Pasteur is the eponymous French scientist, his name appearing in science fiction shows like Star Trek. Vogt's work was considered unsatisfactory by the Soviets. Accordingly, he has been hailed as the "Father of Medicine" and a "Benefactor of Humanity." Craters on Mars and the Moon are named in his honor. However the conclusion of its relevance to genius was contested.

In fact, Pasteur inaugurated the modern age of medicine, leading to an increase in the human life span and a surprising population explosion. Vogt published a paper on the brain in 1929 where he reported that some pyramidal neurons in the third layer of Lenin's cerebral cortex were very large. Pasteurization led to the elimination of contaminated milk and other drinks as sources of disease. The Institute of Brain was created in Moscow for this purpose. Pasteur's method of immunization was effective and was employed by many other physicians, eventually leading to the eradication of the diseases typhus and polio as threats. The Soviet government commissioned the well-known German neuroscientist Oskar Vogt to study Lenin's brain and to locate the precise location of the brain cells that are responsible for genius. He was buried in the Cathedral of Notre Dame, but his remains were soon placed in a crypt in the Institut Pasteur, Paris. Lenin's brain was removed before his body was embalmed.

He died in 1895 near Paris from complications caused by a series of strokes that had begun plaguing him as far back as 1868. Despite Lenin's expressed wish shortly before death that no memorials be created for him, various politicians sought to better their own position vicariously by association with Lenin after his death, and his character was elevated to almost mythical status, with statue after monument after memorial springing up in his honor. Pasteur won the Leeuwenhoek medal, microbiology's highest honour, in 1895. Instead his body was embalmed and placed on permanent exhibition in the Lenin Mausoleum in Moscow. The first of the Pasteur Institutes was also built on the basis of this achievement. Necessary equipment was purchased abroad, but for a variety of reasons the plan was not realised. The treatment's success laid the foundations for the manufacture of many other vaccines. During the early 1920s the Russian movement of cosmism was quite popular and there was an intent to cryogenically preserve Lenin's body in order to revive him in the future.

Fortunately, the treatment proved to be a spectacular success, with Meister avoiding the disease; thus, Pasteur was hailed as a hero and the legal matter was not pursued. Lenin's wife discovered the paper in Lenin's study, and read it to the central committee, who while believing parts of it, did not take it to heart, and as such, these sharp criticisms of the internal party were not more widely released. This was done at some personal risk for Pasteur, since he was not a licensed physician and could have faced prosecution for treating the boy. Of Stalin, who had been the Communist Party's general secretary since April 1922, Lenin said that he had "unlimited authority concentrated in his hands" and suggested that "comrades think about a way of removing Stalin from that post". This vaccine was first used on 9-year old Joseph Meister on July 6, 1885 after the boy was badly mauled by a rabid dog. Most famous of these is Lenin's Testament, which among other things criticized top-ranking communists such as Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin. The vaccine had only been tested in 11 dogs before its first human trial. After his first stroke, Lenin published a number of papers indicating future directions for the government.

The rabies vaccine was initially created by Emile Roux, a French doctor and a collegue of Pasteur who had been working with a killed vaccine produced by desiccating the spinal cords of infected rabbits. Lenin's preserved body is on permanent display in Moscow. Pasteur produced the first vaccine for rabies by growing the virus in rabbits and then weakening it by drying the affected nerve tissue. The city of Petrograd was renamed Leningrad in his honor; this remained the name of the city until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, when it reverted to its original name, St Petersburg. This discovery revolutionised work in infectious diseases, and Pasteur gave these artificially weakened diseases the generic name of vaccines, to honour Jenner's discovery. Most historians still agree that the most likely cause of his death was a stroke induced by the bullet still lodged in his neck from the assassination attempt. The difference with chicken cholera and anthrax was that the weakened form of the disease organism had been generated artificially, and so a naturally weak form of the disease organism did not need to be found. Also, he had no visible lesions on his body that accompany the last stages of the disease.

Edward Jenner had also discovered vaccination, using cowpox to give cross-immunity to smallpox, and by Pasteur's time this had generally replaced the use of actual smallpox material in inoculation. Although he might have had syphilis, so did a large percentage of Russians at this time. Inoculation with smallpox was known to result in far less scarring and greatly reduced mortality than with the naturally acquired disease. In 1923, Lenin's doctors treated him with Salvarsan, the only drug at the time specifically used to treat syphilis, and potassium iodine, which was also customary at the time in treating the disease. The notion of a weak form of a disease causing immunity to the virulent version was not new: this had been known for a long time for smallpox. Upon a second release of the autopsy report, none of the organs, major arteries or brain areas usually affected by syphilis were cited. Pasteur's oxygen method did eventually produce a vaccine but only after he had been awarded a patent on the production of an anthrax vaccine. Abrikosov did not mention syphilis in the autopsy; however, the blood-vessel damage, the paralysis and other incapacities he cited are typical of syphilis.

This method used the oxidizing agent potassium dichromate. Documents also suggest that Alexi Abrikosov, the pathologist in charge of the autopsy, was ordered to prove that Lenin did not die of syphilis. His laboratory notebooks now in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris in fact show that Pasteur used the method of a rival Jean-Joseph-Henri Toussaint, a Toulouse veterinary surgeon to create the anthrax vaccine. Documents released after the fall of the U.S.S.R, along with memoirs of Lenin's physicians, suggest that Lenin was treated for syphilis as early as 1895. Pasteur publicaly claimed that he had made the anthrax vaccine by exposign the bacilus to oxygen. For example, a posthumous diagnosis by two psychiatrists and a neurologist recently published in the European Journal of Neurology claimed to show that Lenin died from syphilis. In the 1870s he applied this immunization method to anthrax, which affected cattle, and aroused interest in combating other diseases. Therefore, several other theories regarding his death have been put forward.

Pasteur guessed that the recovered animals now might be immune to the disease as were the animals at Eure-et-Loir that had recovered from anthrax. The official cause given for Lenin's death was cerebral arteriosclerosis, or a stroke (his fourth), but out of the 27 physicians who treated him, only eight signed onto that conclusion in his autopsy report. Chamberland assumed that an error had been made, and wanted to discard the apparently faulty culture out when Pasteur stopped him. Rumors of Lenin's syphilis sprang up shortly after his death. On his return the month old cultures made the chickens unwell but instead of the infection being fatal as usual the chickens recovered completely. Lenin died on January 21, 1924. Chamberland failed to do this but instead went on holiday himself. In March 1923 he suffered the third stroke and was left bedridden and no longer able to speak.

His assistant Charles Chamberland had been instructed to innocuate the chickens after Pasteur went on holiday. After the second stroke in December of the same year, he resigned from active politics. This discovery was an accident. He was left partially paralyzed (on his right side) and his role in government declined. Upon reusing these healthy chickens, Pasteur discovered that he could not infect them, even with fresh bacteria: the weakened bacteria had caused the chickens to become immune to the disease, although they had not actually caused the disease. In May 1922, Lenin had his first stroke. During this work, a culture of the responsible bacteria had spoiled and failed to induce the disease in some chickens he was infecting with the disease. The bullet was still lodged in his neck too close to his spine for medical techniques of the time to remove.

His later work on diseases included work on chicken cholera. The assassination attempt earlier in his life also added to his health problems. Pasteur also discovered anaerobiosis - that some microorganisms can develop and live without air or oxygen. Lenin's health had already been severely damaged due to the intolerable strains of revolution and war. Pasteur worked several years proving that it was a microbe attacking silkworm eggs which caused the disease, and that eliminating this microbe within silkworm nurseries would eradicate the disease. Of course, that was in a time of peace and order; there had not been war throughout Russia before. In 1865, a disease called pebrine was killing great numbers of silkworms. For comparison, the worst crop failure of late tsarist Russia, in 1892, caused 375,000 to 400,000 deaths [6][7][8].

He proposed preventing the entry of microorganisms into the human body, leading Joseph Lister to develop antiseptic methods in surgery. Estimates on the deaths from this famine are between 3 and 10 million. Beverage contamination led Pasteur to conclude that microorganisms infected animals and humans as well. Lenin's first heart attack was in the fall of 1922; and the extent of his responsibility for the grain sales is therefore unclear, but he would certainly have been pleased. This process was soon afterwards known as pasteurization. When this was discovered, foreign relief organizations suspended aid. He and Claude Bernard completed the first test on April 20, 1862. The net effect, since grain is fungible, was that they received money for nothing from capitalist philanthropy.

With this established, he invented a process in which liquids such as milk were heated to kill all bacteria and molds already present within them. The Bolsheviks permitted the relief agencies to continue distributing free food in 1923, while they sold grain abroad. Pasteur's research also showed that some microorganisms contaminated fermenting beverages. The famine continued through 1922; the A.R.A fed ten million people, and presumably was what kept most of them alive. While Louis Pasteur did not develop germ theory (Girolamo Fracastoro, Friedrich Henle and others had suggested it earlier), he conducted experiments that clearly indicated its correctness and managed to convince most of Europe that it was true. Lenin allowed relief organizations to bring aid, this time, but later had most of the Russian members organizing the aid liquidated. Thus, Pasteur dealt the death blow to the theory of spontaneous generation and supported germ theory. This was one of the causes of the New Economic Policy of 1921; it also helped produce an opening to the West.

Nothing grew in the broths; therefore, the living organisms that grew in such broths came from outside, as spores on dust, rather than being spontaneously generated within the broth. These practices and the accumulated disruptions of six and a half years of war produced a true famine in the early spring of 1921: a hunger so severe that it was doubtful that seed-grain would sown and not eaten. He exposed boiled broths to air in vessels that contained a filter to prevent all particles from passing through to the growth medium and even in vessels with no filter at all, with air being admitted via a long tortuous tube that would not allow dust particles to pass. 121). Louis Pasteur demonstrated that the fermentation process is caused by the growth of microorganisms, and that the growth of microorganisms in nutrient broths is not due to spontaneous generation. In 1920 Lenin ordered increased emphasis on the food requisitioning from the peasantry, at the same time that the Cheka gave detailed reports about the large scale famine (p. In 1857, he was made administrator and director of scientific studies of the École Normale Supérieure. 116-118.

In 1854, he was named Dean of the new College of Science in Lille. 92-97 and p. His doctoral thesis on crystallography got him a position of professor of chemistry at the Faculté (College) of Strasbourg. The war on the peasantry, including the use of poison gas, death camps, and deportations are documented on p. As the first demonstration of chiral molecules, it was quite an achievement, but Pasteur then went on to his more famous work in the field of biology/medicine. 97 and p 120-121. Pasteur correctly deduced that the tartaric acid molecule was asymmetric and could exist in two different forms that resemble one another as a left- and right-hand glove resemble one another. The food requisitioning are documented on p.

An equal mix of the two had no effect on polarized light. The Cheka and the army began by shooting hostages, and ended by waging a second full-scale civil war against the peasantry. Tediously sorting the crystals by hand gave two forms of tartaric acid: solutions of one form rotated polarised light clockwise, while the other form rotated light counterclockwise. In retaliation, Lenin ordered the seizure of the food peasants had grown for their own subsistence and their seed grain. Pasteur noticed, upon examination of the tiny crystals of tartaric acid, that the crystals came in two asymmetric forms that were mirror images of one another. This led peasants to drastically reduce their crop production. The mystery was that tartaric acid derived by chemical synthesis had no such effect, even though its reactions were identical and its elemental composition was the same. The American Relief Association, which Herbert Hoover had formed to help the starvation of WWI, offered assistance to Lenin in 1919, on condition that they have full say over the Russian railway network and hand out food impartially to all; Lenin refused this as interference in Russian internal affairs.

A solution of this compound derived from living things (specifically, wine lees) rotated the plane of polarization of light passing through it. The Bolshevik efficiency at this is confirmed by their recently uncovered records; it is probably one cause of their victory. In his early work as a chemist he resolved a problem concerning the nature of tartaric acid (1849). All sides in the Russian Civil Wars of 1918-20 - the Bolsheviks, the Whites, the Anarchists, the seceding nationalities - provisioned themselves by the ancient method of "living off the land": they seized food from those who grew it, gave it to their armies and supporters, and denied it to their enemies. . In total, 50,000-200,000 summary executions of "class enemies" occurred during Lenin regime.
. 105).

He also famously quoted: "Le hasard favorise l’esprit preparé" ("Chance favors the prepared mind"). There were large scale rapes of "bourgeoisie women" documented in 1920 (p. He is known to the general public for his demonstration of the germ theory of disease and his development techniques of inoculation, most notably the first vaccine against rabies; however, he also made a major discovery in the field of chemistry, regarding asymmetric molecules and the polarization of light. 80). Louis Pasteur (December 27, 1822 – September 28, 1895) was a French microbiologist and chemist. In May 1919, there were 16,000 people in labor camp based on the old Tsarist katorga labor camps, in September 1921 there were more than 70,000 (p. This led to the particularly intensive period of oppression called the Red Terror.

After the assassination attempt on Lenin and the succesful assassination of Cheka leader Moisei Uritsky on the same day, Lenin and the other Bolshevik leaders decided to respond with overwhelming force, both as retribution and as a deterrent for any similar future attempts. 63). Trotsky also supported starting concentration camps (p. 72-73).

(p. On the 9 and 10 of August, Lenin sent out telegrams ordering mass executions, deportations, and concentration camps. 68). In June 1918, the Cheka already had 12,000 members (p.

67). There were around 110 peasants uprisings in July and August (p. 68). Also in May, several working-class demonstrations were bloodily suppressed (p.

66). Starting in May, food was being "requisitioned" from the peasants (p. 60-61). Starting in January 1918, war prisoners were being tortured and killed on a large scale (p.

55). On November 13, an order was sent out that all who were suspected being an "enemy of the people" should be imprisoned (p. 54). The Communists started closing down independent newspaper and radio stations the day after (p.

According to the claims of the Black Book of Communism (Using the Julian calendar): The October revolution was on October 25. But the same month saw the suppression of an uprising among sailors at Kronstadt ("the Kronstadt rebellion"). In March 1921, Lenin replaced the policy of War communism (which had been used during the civil war) with the New Economic Policy (NEP), in an attempt to rebuild industry and especially agriculture. The long years of war had taken their toll on Russia, however, and much of the country lay in ruins.

However the defeat of Soviet Russia in Polish-Soviet War invalidated these plans. With revolution in Germany and Spartacist League on the rise, Lenin viewed this a perfect time and place to "to probe Europe with the bayonets of the Red Army." Lenin saw Poland as the bridge that the Red Army would have to cross in order to link up the Russian Revolution with the communist supporters in the German Revolution, and to assist other communist movements in Western Europe. When the newly independent Second Polish Republic began securing its eastern territories annexed by Russia in the partitions of Poland in late 18th century, it clashed with Bolshevik forces for dominance in these areas, which have led to the outbreak of the Polish-Soviet War in 1919. In the later months of 1919, successes against White Russian forces convinced Lenin that it was time to spread the revolution to the West, by force if necessary.

Eventually, the Red Army won the civil war, defeating the White Russian forces and their allies in 1920 (although smaller forces remained for several more years). Foreign powers such as France, Britain, United States and Japan also intervened in this war (on behalf of the White Army). Although many different factions were involved in the civil war, the two main forces were the Red Army (communists) and the White Army (monarchists). A wide variety of political movements and their supporters took up arms to support or overthrow the soviet government.

Meanwhile, a civil war raged across Russia. In Russia, the Bolshevik Party was renamed the "Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks)", which eventually became the CPSU. From that point onwards, they would be known as communists. Members of the Communist International, including Lenin and the Bolsheviks themselves, broke off from the broader socialist movement.

In March, 1919, Lenin and other Bolshevik leaders met with revolutionary socialists from around the world and formed the Communist International. Lenin eventually recovered, though his health declined from this point, and it is believed that the incident contributed to his later strokes. Doctors were summoned, but decided that it was too dangerous to remove the bullets. Lenin was taken to his private apartment in the Kremlin, and refused to venture to a hospital, believing other assassins would be waiting there.

She called out to Lenin, and when he turned to answer, fired three shots, two of which struck him in the shoulder and lung. On August 30, 1918, Fanya Kaplan, a member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, approached Lenin after he'd spoken at a meeting and was on his way to his car. Lenin responded by (unsuccessfully) trying to shut down their activities. The situation degenerated, with non-Bolshevik parties (including some of the socialist groups) actively seeking the overthrow of the soviet government.

However, their coalition collapsed after the Social Revolutionaries opposed the Brest-Litovsk treaty, and they joined other parties in seeking to overthrow the government of the soviets. They formed a coalition government with the left wing of the Socialist Revolutionaries. [5]. The Bolsheviks instead opened a counter-Assembly, the third Congress of Soviets, giving themselves and their allies over 90% of the seats.

Lenin dissolved the Assembly on the same day it opened its first session. One month after the October revolution, the Bolsheviks gained 25% of the votes in the Russian Constituent Assembly election, 1917. As a result of this turn of events, Lenin's position consequently gained the support of the majority in the Bolshevik leadership, and Russia signed the eventual Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, under disadvantageous terms (March 1918). After the negotiations collapsed, Germany launched an invasion that resulted in the loss of much of Russia's western territory.

Leon Trotsky, who led the negotiations, advocated an intermediate position, calling for a peace treaty only on the conditions that no territorial gains on either side be consolidated. Other Bolshevik leaders, such as Bukharin, advocated continuing the war as a means of fomenting revolution in Germany. Faced with the threat of German invasion, Lenin argued that Russia should immediately sign a peace treaty. On November 8, Lenin was elected as Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars by the Russian Soviet Congress.

Kaiser Wilhelm II himself is thought to have expected Lenin to paralyze the Russian army through revolution and end the war on the Eastern front and he saw him only as a contemporary figure that would lose power soon afterwards. Eye witnesses are said to have confirmed that Lenin had been carried in a sealed train on the way, escorted by Germans. It has been largely suggested that Lenin had reached Petrograd from Switzerland with the help of the German Empire. His ideas of government were expressed in his essay "State and Revolution" [4], which called for a new form of government based on the worker's councils, or soviets.

He returned in October, inspiring an armed revolution with the slogan "All Power to the Soviets!", against the Provisional Government. After a failed workers' uprising in July, Lenin fled to Finland for safety. However, this uncompromising stand meant that the Bolsheviks were the obvious home for the masses as they became disillusioned and with the luxury of opposition they were freed from the responsibility for any consequences from the implementation of their policies (Christopher Read: From Tsar to soviets pp151-3). Initially by this lurch to the left Lenin isolated his party.

In the April theses called for uncompromising opposition to the provisional government. On April 16, 1917, he returned to Petrograd from Switzerland following the overthrow of Tsar Nicholas II, and took a leading role within the Bolshevik movement, publishing the April Theses [3]. Inessa Armand became Lenin's partner. When Inessa Armand left Russia and settled in Paris, she met Vladimir Lenin and other Bolsheviks living in exile.

He continued to travel in Europe and participated in many socialist meetings and activities, including the Zimmerwald Conference of 1915. In 1907 he moved to Finland for security reasons. In 1906 he was elected to the Presidium of the RSDLP. He was active in the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP), and in 1903 he led the Bolshevik faction after a split with the Mensheviks that was partly inspired by his pamphlet What is to be Done? [2].

At this period, he started using various aliases, finally settling upon Lenin, most likely in allusion to the Lena execution. He travelled in Russia and elsewhere in Europe and published the paper Iskra as well as other tracts and books related to the revolutionary movement. In 1900, his exile ended. In April 1899, he published the book The Development of Capitalism in Russia [1].

In July 1898, he married Nadezhda Krupskaya, who was a socialist activist. On December 7, 1895, he was arrested and held by authorities for an entire year, then exiled to the village of Shushenskoye in Siberia. Petersburg. Rather than settle into a legal career, he became more involved in revolutionary propaganda efforts and the study of Marxism, much of it in St.

He continued to study independently and by 1891 had earned a license to practice law. This radicalized Vladimir (his official Soviet biographies have this event as central to Lenin's revolutionary exploits) and later that year he was arrested, and expelled from Kazan University for participating in student protests. The following year, in May of 1887 his eldest brother Alexander Ulyanov was hanged for participation in a plot threatening the life of Tsar Alexander III. Two tragedies occurred in his early life: in 1886, his father died of a cerebral hemorrhage.

Vladimir distinguished himself in the study of Latin and Greek. Vladimir Ulyanov (Lenin) himself was baptised into the Russian Orthodox Church. He had Kalmyk ancestry through his paternal grandparents, Volga German ancestry through his maternal grandmother, who was a Lutheran, and Jewish ancestry through his maternal grandfather (converted to Christianity). Like many Russians, he was of mixed ethnic and religious ancestry.

Born in Simbirsk, Russia, Lenin was the son of Ilya Nikolaevich Ulyanov (1831 - 1886), a Russian civil service official who worked for increased democracy and free universal education in Russia, and his liberal wife Maria Alexandrovna Blank (1835 - 1916). . He is sometimes erroneously referred to in the West as "Nikolai Lenin", though he has never been known as such in Russia. There are other theories on where his name came from and he himself is not known to have ever stated exactly why he chose it.

However, Plekhanov appears to have been a significant influence upon Lenin at that time in his life, so the veracity of this explanation is subject to question. Ulyanov picked the Lena which is longer and flows in the opposite direction. It has been suggested that he chose this name to show his opposition to Georgi Plekhanov who used the pseudonym Volgin, after the Volga River; i.e. "Lenin" was one of his revolutionary pseudonyms.

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (Russian: Влади́мир Ильи́ч Ле́нин  listen^?), original surname Ulyanov (Улья́нов) (April 22 (April 10 (O.S.)), 1870 – January 21, 1924), was a Russian revolutionary, the leader of the Bolshevik party, the first Premier of the Soviet Union, and the main theorist of Leninism, which he described as an adaptation of Marxism to "the age of imperialism".