Louis Pasteur develops immunization vaccines for anthrax…

Louis Pasteur develops immunization vaccines for anthrax and, later, rabies.

Pasteur reportedly had told his family in 1878 never to show anyone his lab notebooks.

Pasteur’s last surviving grandson will donate the document to the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris in 1964; later historians will find evidence of potential scientific misconduct and substantial human experimentation of dubious worth.

Pasteur publicly claims he had made the anthrax vaccine by exposing the bacilli to oxygen.

His laboratory notebooks, now in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, in fact show Pasteur used the method of rival Jean-Joseph-Henri Toussaint, a Toulouse veterinary surgeon, to create the anthrax vaccine.

This method used the oxidizing agent potassium dichromate.

Pasteur's oxygen method does eventually produce a vaccine but only after he had been awarded a patent on the production of an anthrax vaccine.

In 1995, the centennial of Pasteur’s death, The New York Times will run an article titled "Pasteur's Deception".

After having thoroughly read Pasteur's lab notes, the science historian Gerald L. Geison will declare Pasteur had given a misleading account of the preparation of the anthrax vaccine used in the experiment at Pouilly-le-Fort.

Max Perutz will counter with a vigorous defense of Pasteur in the New York Review of Books.