Focus on this artwork and analyze the Background.
Louis Pasteur (1822–1895) was a French chemist and microbiologist renowned for his discoveries of the principles of vaccination, microbial fermentation and pasteurization. He is remembered for his remarkable breakthroughs in the causes and prevention of diseases, and his discoveries have saved countless lives ever since.
Innovative laboratory glassware and experimental methods were developed by Louis Pasteur among others, and contributed to the developing field of bacteriology in the late 19th century. In the 1880s, bacteriology was becoming a coherent discipline, especially through methods for growing pure cultures on agar gels containing specific nutrients in Petri dishes. The long-held idea that living organisms could easily originate from nonliving matter called spontaneous generation was attacked in a series of experiments carried out by Pasteur. In the portrait, Pasteur is shown holding a glass bottle containing the spinal cord of a rabbit infected with rabies. This was suggested to the artist by Pasteur himself who was at the time working on a rabies vaccine.
vaccination spinal cord chemist pasteurization laboratory glassware bacteriology microbiologist rabies Louis Pasteur Petri dish microbial fermentation agar gels fermentation diseases spontaneous generation