The Alchemy of Murder (20 page)

“We took samples from the sewer,” Dr. Pasteur said, “and received only this morning the blood and tissue samples of the deceased worker taken by Doctor Brouardel’s deputy. Brouardel refused to permit us to take samples from the worker ourselves.”

Pasteur’s tone didn’t fail to reveal that he was still rankled by the health director’s attitude. The minister was well aware of the controversy between Pasteurians and the medical community. Like any good politician, he avoided the issue by raising his eyebrows and looking sympathetic while not committing himself to anything.

“What do your tests reveal?”

“We found countless microbes as would be expected in a sewer, but we are unable to isolate a particular microbe that we can identify with the Black Fever. Even if the fever microbe is too small to see with our microscopes, we should be able to detect its presence with our experiments. We did not.”

“How can you detect something that you can’t see?”

“By the symptoms they create when a sample taken from an infected creature is given to a healthy one. We can’t see the microbe that causes even ordinary influenza, but with experiments, we know it exists and that it can be spread from person to person through air and physical contact. If there were Black Fever microbes in the samples, they should cause a reaction in laboratory animals.”

“Does the fact you can’t see them in any way prove the theory that miasma from the sewers is the cause? Doesn’t the death of the sewer worker support the theory?”

Pasteur shook his head. “Monsieur Minister, the death of one worker among hundreds hardly confirms the theory. He could have contacted the disease anywhere. There is no doubt that sewers carry the most varied and concentrated microbes imaginable, but sewers have been with man for thousands of years. The miasma theory has been popular with certain elements because it sounds logical. Microbes breed in sewers, vapors rise from sewers, we smell and breathe them in, thus it sounds logical that we are breathing in sewer microbes.”

“What do you find wrong with the theory?”

“Logic and reason are for philosophers, scientists rely upon objective tests. Many tests have been done of sewer smells and none support the theory that the disease is spread by them. Sewers spread disease in many ways, from physical contact, by contaminated drinking water, but the stench has not been found to carry disease-causing microbes.”

“Frankly, Messieurs Doctors, a finding that the sewers were the cause would not be unwelcome by our government because it would rebut the baseless allegations that the fever is a plot to rid the country of its poor. But if not the sewers, then we must find the cause. Doctor Pasteur, your past services to France have been inestimable. And once again the country must call upon you. The crisis has reached new proportions because something of the most serious nature has occurred. It has spread to this area, La Poivrière.”

Pasteur ran his own finger across the map. “So, it has spread across the city from the original site.”

“Not
spread
, but
jumped
from one area of destitute people to another locale of the poor, passing over the more affluent areas.”

Pasteur scoffed. “Microbes don’t pick their victims based upon their monetary worth or social position.”

“Exactly what the radicals are shouting when they accuse the government of poisoning the poor. So why has the fever bypassed the well-to-do sections and struck the poor?”

Pasteur and Roth exchanged looks. They found nothing in the samples to explain the epidemic from a scientific point of view, let alone from a study of society. Roth knew that even if Pasteur had a theory as to what was happening, he would not voice it. He was known for his reticence even to his closest associates when it came to expressing opinions prior to all the evidence being examined.

“Tell me about the sewer openings in this new area of contagion. Is there anything unusual about them?” Pasteur asked.

“The sewer facilities in the area are the same as many thousands of others in this city of over two million. There’s no reason for the Black Fever to strike lethally in one neighborhood and mildly in another. You scoff at the notion that a miasma was responsible for the outbreak. While a certain number of us in government would privately support your opinion about sewer gases, it’s the only explanation that the public considers credible. What else are we to tell them? That a politically minded microbe has decided to kill off the poor of the city?”

Pasteur was silent, but his face revealed his opinion that such a theory was absurd.

The minister waved at his aide. “Give them the samples.”

The aide sat a box on the desk.

“These are from Pigalle Hospital, which is where all Black Fever victims are sent. We are keeping that facility as our medical command center to reduce the possibility of further spread of the disease. I took the liberty of having Doctor Dubois at the hospital provide blood and tissue samples of the most recent victims.”

“We shall examine the samples immediately. But I would have preferred to have taken them myself.”

The minister looked pained. “As you know, the medical practitioners—”

“Yes, yes, but I need your assurance that these samples were taken from a person immediately after death.”

“The time of death and the time the samples were taken are on each bottle. Tell me, Monsieur Doctor, are there any conclusions at all that you’ve arrived at? I’ll be asked by the president at tomorrow’s cabinet meeting.”

“For certain the fever does not spontaneously generate from inside the body. Like the plague, typhoid, and other contagions, it is caused by an invasion of a person by a microbe. The culprit is a parasite that attacks the body after it enters. While it is possible that the microbe breeds in the sewers and enters our bodies through contact with air or drinking water, at this point we have not established how the contact is made or how it spreads.”

“Until we know, Messieurs, you understand that we must support the miasma theory.”

“I leave politics to those of you who practice that art. From a scientific point of view, the decisive proof will be to discover the presence of the microbe by examining it in a sterile culture. That is what we shall do.”

*   *   *

P
ASTEUR AND
R
OTH
retired to the laboratory with the new samples from Pigalle Hospital and immediately began testing.

Microbes were mainly aquatic creatures that had to live in liquid to survive. When the “host” they infected died and bodily fluids dried up, most microbes also died, though some of them instead went into a state of hibernation—“spores” covered by hard shells, waiting to be picked up by another host. Once they found a warm, comfortable sea to live in, such as the human bloodstream, they grew and multiplied at an inconceivable rate. Microbes that carried human disease—plague, cholera, small pox, and dozens of other ailments—found the human body a bounty of food and shelter, an ocean of plenty.

When a sample of blood and tissue was drawn from an infected person it provided a culture they could use to experiment with, enabling them to identify the microbe and learn how it spread and how to stop it.

Their first examination of the samples was the most basic possible. Using sterile utensils and sterile plates, they took a piece of each sample and examined it under the microscope looking for microbes. Blood and urine were ordinarily sterile. Even when not sterile, a common microbe, like one causing a urinary tract infection, would be recognizable to them and eliminated as a cause of the Black Fever.

Dr. Pasteur gave René and Roth precise instructions as to how he wanted the samples set up. This procedure was quite tiring—examining the samples in an undiluted state and then placing a drop of each sample in various mediums under varying conditions.

Some microbes thrived when exposed to air, others existed without oxygen. Some lived only in a vacuum, others in pure carbonic acid. Like humans, they were particular about the temperatures they could survive in—while some could survive boiling water, others perished with a few degrees change in temperature.

When an aide complained of the many tests Pasteur demanded, he told them, “Ce n’est pas la mer à boire.” It’s not the sea to swallow. He tolerated no malingering from his staff. Like a general leading an army, he demanded heroic efforts and was always the first to give such efforts.

Soon after becoming employed at the Institut, Roth learned that the Pasteurians were proud that they were the only laboratory in France where it was possible to properly handle microbes, exposing them to an indefinite number of successive mediums, searching for the microbe’s favorite, instead of limited to just a few soups.

All had to be done carefully. Microbes were invisible killers. One could spend thousands of hours examining an invisible entity and be struck down by a single lapse in handling the specimen.

When Roth finished examining samples under the microscopes, he told Dr. Pasteur, “I’m unable to isolate a microbe.”

The frown on his face showed his disappointment.

“There’s no reaction from laboratory animals commiserate with what one would expect. Even if the microbe is too small to be seen under our microscopes, it is not too small to kill.” Pasteur was puzzled. “We should be able to detect it in other ways.”

*   *   *

R
ENÉ
,
WHO HAD
been working in an adjoining lab, interrupted Roth with his findings. “Tomas, once again I have encountered strange results from samples sent by Doctor Dubois. The specimen is marked as taken from a Black Fever victim, but I suspect that death was caused by carbon monoxide poisoning.”

Carbon monoxide deaths were common in the winter months because most heating was done with coal. Poor people in small rooms with coal braziers were most susceptible.

“Perhaps the person succumbed to poisoned air because he was weakened by the fever and couldn’t get out of the room.”

René shook his head.

Roth could see he was very disturbed. René knew how meticulous Pasteur was and feared making a mistake.

“This isn’t the first time I haven’t been able to isolate a fever microbe in specimens this doctor Dubois has sent … and every specimen points to other ailments as the cause of death. I am completely stumped. I haven’t told Doctor Pasteur about my findings, but I feel now—”

“You’re right, let me check them before you approach him. In the meantime, I’ll speak to him about me contacting Dubois and see if he will let me obtain specimens directly.”

29

An urgent message from the minister once again sped Pasteur and Roth from the Institut, this time to an impoverished district where an outbreak of the fever had occurred.

They proceeded behind the health department director’s carriage to the tenement house they were to investigate, both of them wishing that they could make the investigation sans the company of the pompous and arrogant Doctor Brouardel and his assistant. Brouardel had no idea what science was really about or what it was capable of accomplishing.

As the carriages halted on the corrupted cobblestone street in front of the tenement, they entered into a world of prostitutes, pimps, petty criminals, and the poorest of laborers. Three police wagons were lined up, waiting for them. A crowd had gathered. The message from the minister stated that the police would be present in case of any “disturbance.”

Pasteur and Roth stepped down from their carriage. A dozen street children, hollow-eyed mudlarks with dirty faces and pinched bodies followed their movements with the intensity of lab rats. There was a sad cunning in the faces of these children: only the clever survived this milieu where young girls withered into whores and boys became fodder for the guillotine.

Women who paused to note their arrival watched them with defeated eyes recessed in dark sockets; broken men, leading lives of quiet desperation, their hope crushed by the vicious trap of poverty, stared at the coaches and clothes as if they had been purchased with food taken from their children’s mouths. A black flag of anarchy hung from a window of the tenement. Desperate people listened to anyone who promised them bread.

There was grumbling among those gathered. “Have you been sent to kill more of us?” a man yelled.

“That’s Monsieur Doctor Pasteur,” an awed voice piped in.

The crowd buzzed with the name and they parted respectfully as the scientists walked into the tenement in the accompaniment of four officers. Pasteur’s relationship with the medical profession was controversial, to say the least, but to the rest of France, he was a national treasure.

The health director and his young assistant remained in their carriage, declining to step out. Cowards. They would never understand what the people were going through. Nor did they care.

The concierge greeted Pasteur and Roth at the entry. “Welcome, Messieurs, welcome.”

He was a revolting creature wearing a dirty shirt whose original color was lost under a goulash of food stains and grime; heavy suspenders held up worn pants and a globular belly.

It was morning and he smelled of wine, garlic, sweat, and even less pleasant things, the likes of which got thrown into the sewer hole from chamber pots. Under a microscope, no doubt, he would have proved to possess more microbes than a barrel of sewer sludge.