The Pasteurization of France

Abstract

47 chapter 7 were printed out of order. While this flaw may only be a careless oversight, it adds to the reader's confusion, which is already significant. In conclusion, Engelmeier and O'Connell, the editors of this book, define dilated cardiomyopathy as distinct from ischemic cardiac disease. They claim that its incidence is increasing, and that it is quite probably linked to myocarditis. They then include papers from studies which do not discriminate between the ischemic and dilated forms of cardiomyopathy, thereby undermining the presumed importance of their book. For this reason, I do not recommend the volume. It is a complex world, and the human mind is simple: we tend to simplify our environment through generalizations and categorizations. In similar fashion, we simplify history by dwelling on dates and facts and by attributing major events and broad trends to the actions of a few individuals. The Franco-Russian wars of the early nineteenth century, including the battles of Moscow and Tarutino, have often been attributed to the journeying of a single man, Napoleon, and his "Grande Armee." Indeed, we often speak of the "Napoleonic Era." Latour points out the manner in which Tolstoy reacted against that simplification, noting how Tolstoy's monumental War and Peace was an attempt, in a mere eight hundred pages, to "give back to the multitude the effectiveness that the historians of his century placed in the virtue or genius of a few men." Likewise, Bruno Latour points to the recurrent fallacy in the history of science of "the great man ... alone in his laboratory, alone with his concepts ... he revolutionizes the society around him by the power of his mind alone." This reductionist scenario is far too simple; it ignores the broad forces and movements in science and in society which both influence the revolutionary and which implement his "revolution." In The Pasteurization ofFrance, the author critically examines the myth of Pasteur, a myth in which Pasteur is the leviathan who conquers the world of microbes and, with his Germ Theory, single-handedly brings the French people and the world into the Modern Age. The Pasteurization of France is presented in two parts. The first consists of three major chapters and begins with the story of the rise of the hygienists in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Latour sets out to prove that the microbiological revolution (to borrow a political term) which occurred in …