The cult of relics: Pasteur material at the Science Museum.

This controversial statement was the starting point for a study of the authenticity of what was potentially one of the most important groups of material in the Wellcome Collections now at the Science Museum. Yet the issue of authenticity seemed insignificant when examined in the context of the rationale behind this collection. The research for this initial study generated a large number of questions about the origin of museum collections and their relationship to the broader history of science. Why was Wellcome so interested in apparently trivial memorabilia? Why was there so much interest in this type of material in the 1 920s? Why had Pasteur and his followers bothered to preserve what was often standard laboratory equipment? Research in the Wellcome Institute archives revealed that most of the objects cannot be proved to be authentic originals. However, this paper will demonstrate that the significance of a museum's collection depends on issues other than authenticity. In this instance new light is also shed on the cult of Pasteur as a Great Man of Science. Pasteur himself referred to the adoration of great men as a cult, which is something deeper and more religious than the phenomenon of hero-worship written about by Carlyle.2 Hero-worship involves the