SUBJECT FOR PASTEUR

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 134, 3 December 1940, Page 9

SUBJECT FOR PASTEUR

Only recently have Parisians learned of the death on June 23 or 24 of one of the city's famous characters— Joseph Meister, who as a boy of nine in 1885 became famous as the first human subject on whom Louis Pasteur".tried his antirabies serum. Meister in an. indirect way was the victim of the.mad stampede from Paris as German troops approached the city. Porter^ at the Pasteur Institute on the. left-bank ol the Seine, a job which he had.held for twenty-six years after, being-Pas-teur's laboratory assistant, Meister insisted that his wife and two daughters should leave Paris and take refuge with his mother in a village near Avallon When, after a few days, Meister heard stories of the terrible plight of the refugees and when he had received no news from them, he became convinced they were dead and that he was responsible. On June 24 he was found dead in the porter's lodge of the institute. Presumably, he committed suicide by gas. Meister's wife and two daughters, having turned back towards Paris before reaching their destination, arrived in Paris k>n June 25. The first object they saw >on entering the porter's lodge was the coffin containing Meister's body. _