From Booklist
Reynolds tells an important story succinctly and accessibly. A medical technologist with a Ph.D. in biochemistry, she is acquainted with medical research and stresses the importance of excellent intuition, careful observation, and well-designed experimentation, all of which Pasteur practiced. (Patience and perseverence are also invaluable to the medical researcher, she suggests.) She places Pasteur's researches on the optical activity of crystals and on chicken cholera, anthrax, and rabies in their context, including major political, fine arts, and historical events and figures, which Reynolds cites in order to give a feeling for what was going on outside Pasteur's laboratory and lecture hall. The subsequent story of the Pasteur Institute she tells primarily by sketching the Nobel laureates among its scientists. William Beatty
