The clinician, germs and infectious diseases: the example of Charles Bouchard in Paris.

on the theoretical aspects and have tended to attribute a privileged role to Louis Pasteur. The majority of French historians have simply analysed the "Pasteurization" of French medicine and implicitly assumed the validity of this analysis for western medicine and the overall importance of the French hygienist movement, the role of the "go-betweens" of Pasteurism's influence on Pasteurian "know-how" and "network".? In 1984, Bruno Latour broke with eulogistic historiography, but still maintained Pasteur's central role to the extent that he controlled the network that he had created, that is to say, the mediators between his laboratory, hygiene and the clinic.3 But little has been said about these clinicians.4 It seems that this way of viewing them, as mere importers of Pasteurian ideas, neglects the fact that these practitioners themselves did laboratory work, using approaches different from Pasteur's, whether they worked on etiology, made use of bacteriological tools and appropriated clinical bacteriology to their own interests, and raised their own questions, not necessarily those of Pasteur's laboratory, in relation to their experiences as practising doctors.