Although every town in France has a street named for Pasteur, was he alone able to stop people from spitting, persuade them to dig drains, influence them to undergo vaccination? Pasteur's success depended upon a whole network of forces, including the public hygiene movement, the medical profession (both military physicians and private practitioners), and colonial interests. It is the operation of these forces, in combination with the talent of Pasteur, that Bruno Latour sets before us as a prime example of science in action.

Although every town in France has a street named for Pasteur, was he alone able to stop people from spitting, persuade them to dig drains, influence them to undergo vaccination? Pasteur's success depended upon a whole network of forces, including the public hygiene movement, the medical profession (both military physicians and private practitioners), and colonial interests. It is the operation of these forces, in combination with the talent of Pasteur, that Bruno Latour sets before us as a prime example of science in action.

2002-04-07 A fascinating, yet unbalanced scientific success-story

In short, it is a story about how Louis Pasteur managed to win almost everyone in France of that time (hygienists, doctors, army, state, public) on his side - that is, make them accept his germ theory. He did it in a series of clever moves - doctors, afraid of letting control over the treatment of patients to laboratory scientists, were given sera and vaccines to administer; hygienists got new solid scientific grounds for their theories; the state got the cause of anthrax and the public - spectacular experiments to admire.
Latour is an excellent storyteller: his account of Pasteur, in big, bold moves of brush, is exciting and compelling. He avails of the approaches of sociology of scientific knowledge, popular a couple of decades ago, in appreciating the social factors in the "constructing" (rather than "discovering") scientific facts and he plunges into one of the most famous episodes of the history of medicine, as well as of the French national history, to tell us this success-story.
However, I am a bit worried about the way he just leaves aside everything (and everyone) that does not interest him, or that he finds unimportant for his story - about Pasteur - and ends up with a rather unbalanced account. After reading this book, someone who does not know much about history of medicine may conclude that Pasteur practically single-handedly invented the germ theory, arrived to the most important conclusions, and forged the discipline of bacteriology, which is certainly not true. At least Robert Koch would deserve more attention!