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Starting from the story of baby’s development in a Laotian family, we have identified the primary role of a ceremony unique to Laos: the Baci. This ceremony evidences both concretely and symbolically the internal parts of a subject are linked together and the links of the subject with his family. Baci accompanies him throughout his life and reinforces his sense of unity and the anchoriin his family and his village of origin. We present an anthropological reading of Baci and look for a possible proximity with our conceptualizations on the construction of psychic life .We suggest an association with D. Winnicott approach of the transitional space and its links with culture., A partir du récit du développement d'un bébé dans une famille laotienne, nous repérons l'importance d'une cérémonie particulière au Laos : le Baci. Cette cérémonie manifeste concrètement et symboliquement les liens d'un sujet à l'intérieur de lui-même et avec sa famille. Elle l'accompagne tout au long de sa vie et conforte son sentiment d'unité et son ancrage dans sa famille et son village d'origine. Nous présenterons sa lecture anthropologique puis cherchant une proximité avec nos conceptualisations sur la construction de la vie psychique nous l'associerons aux écrits de D. Winnicott sur l'espace transitionnel et ses liens avec la culture Mots clefs : Laos, particularités du maternage, place des esprits, cérémonie du Baci, rôle du Baci dans le maintien de l'unité personnelle et familiale, chainage familial, enveloppe sécurisante, Winnicott, espace transitionnel. Title. The Baci ceremony in Laos: a symbolic bridge between the construction of the subject and the association to family and socius Summary. Starting from the story of baby's development in a Laotian family, we have identified the primary role of a ceremony unique to Laos: the Baci. This ceremony evidences both concretely and symbolically the internal parts of a subject are linked together and the links of the subject with his family. Baci accompanies him throughout his life and reinforces his sense of unity and the anchoriin his family and his village of origin. We present an anthropological reading of Baci and look for a possible proximity with our conceptualizations on the construction of psychic life .We suggest an association with D. Winnicott approach of the transitional space and its links with culture.

The development of anti-diphtheria serotherapy at the Institut Pasteur immediately follows the crisis known as the Pasteur-Koch debate. Research on diphtheria in Paris is indicative of the importance granted by Pasteurian scientists to Koch’s school criticisms. After 1887, relations between French and German bacteriologists become more relaxed. A scientific and social network develops between them. It later extends to other fields of research at the Institut Pasteur, particularly therapeutic chemistry. The evolution of Franco-German relations at the Institut Pasteur is placed in the general framework of the way French universities considered German science.

Peut-on discuter de psychosomatique sans se référer aux théories sur lesquelles s'appuient les mécanismes en cause ? La médecine psychosomatique est-elle d'ailleurs un objet d'étude scientifique et n'est-ce pas plutôt un objet d'étude historique ? Présentée comme un corpus scientifique pour les uns, comme une illusion pour les autres, la médecine psychosomatique m'apparait maintenant comme étant les deux tout à la fois. Pour un dictionnaire récent de grande diffusion, est psychosomatique ce qui est « relatif aux troubles organiques ou fonctionnels occasionnés, favorisés ou aggravés par des facteurs psychiques (émotionnels et affectifs) » 1. Cette qualification d'un lien entre l'organique et le psychique n'est pas une véritable définition : c'est le simple constat d'un intérêt récent pour cette question, et d'ailleurs le mot n'existe pas dans des dictionnaires antérieurs à 1950. Que recouvre donc un mot neuf, mal défini, mais que cependant tout le monde actuellement connaît et utilise ? Saint Augustin en fournit-par analogie-la clef : « Qu'est-ce en effet que le temps ? Qui saurait en donner avec aisance et brièveté une explication ? [...] Si personne ne me pose la question, je le sais ; si quelqu'un pose la question et que je veuille expliquer, je ne sais plus. » 2 Ce texte ressassé, ne saurait être séparé du livre qui précède et dans lequel Saint Augustin s'étend sur la mémoire et la dimension temporelle de la vie humaine. Si, dans cette présentation du lien entre temps, mémoire, histoire individuelle et temporalité, on remplace le mot « temps » par celui de « psychosomatique », l'ensemble de l'énoncé augustinien reste applicable, non seulement dans son organisation formelle mais dans cette manière de cerner l'impossibilité de donner une définition unique au temps humain tout comme à « psychosomatique » sans référence à l'histoire personnelle du sujet ou à celle de l'énonciateur. On posera donc ici qu'il n'y a pas de définition à « psychosomatique ». Ou plutôt elle serait largement personnelle et ayant seulement en commun avec d'autres, ce constat indécis d'un lien entre vie psychique et émotionnelle, et manifestations somatiques, 1 Dictionnaire Robert de la langue Française. Pyschosomatique : adj. « Relatif aux troubles organiques ou fonctionnels occasionnés, favorisés ou aggravés par des facteurs psychiques (émotionnels et affectifs) Ed. Le Robert, Paris 2010. L'Oxford dictionary of English utilise une définition voisine en donnant comme facteurs de causalité « internal conflicts and stress ». Oxford University Press, 2003. 2 Saint Augustin. La création du monde et le temps, livre XI des confessions. Traduction Arnauld d'Andilly. Gallimard Paris, 2007

International audience; Starting from the story of baby’s development in a Laotian family, we have identified the primary role of a ceremony unique to Laos: the Baci. This ceremony evidences both concretely and symbolically the internal parts of a subject are linked together and the links of the subject with his family. Baci accompanies him throughout his life and reinforces his sense of unity and the anchoriin his family and his village of origin. We present an anthropological reading of Baci and look for a possible proximity with our conceptualizations on the construction of psychic life .We suggest an association with D. Winnicott approach of the transitional space and its links with culture.; A partir du récit du développement d'un bébé dans une famille laotienne, nous repérons l'importance d'une cérémonie particulière au Laos : le Baci. Cette cérémonie manifeste concrètement et symboliquement les liens d'un sujet à l'intérieur de lui-même et avec sa famille. Elle l'accompagne tout au long de sa vie et conforte son sentiment d'unité et son ancrage dans sa famille et son village d'origine. Nous présenterons sa lecture anthropologique puis cherchant une proximité avec nos conceptualisations sur la construction de la vie psychique nous l'associerons aux écrits de D. Winnicott sur l'espace transitionnel et ses liens avec la culture Mots clefs : Laos, particularités du maternage, place des esprits, cérémonie du Baci, rôle du Baci dans le maintien de l'unité personnelle et familiale, chainage familial, enveloppe sécurisante, Winnicott, espace transitionnel. Title. The Baci ceremony in Laos: a symbolic bridge between the construction of the subject and the association to family and socius Summary. Starting from the story of baby's development in a Laotian family, we have identified the primary role of a ceremony unique to Laos: the Baci. This ceremony evidences both concretely and symbolically the internal parts of a subject are linked together and the links of the subject with his family. Baci accompanies him throughout his life and reinforces his sense of unity and the anchoriin his family and his village of origin. We present an anthropological reading of Baci and look for a possible proximity with our conceptualizations on the construction of psychic life .We suggest an association with D. Winnicott approach of the transitional space and its links with culture.

De nombreux travaux relatifs au développement embryonnaire des mammifères, font encore référence en 2017 à un texte publié en 1927 par une chercheuse russe émigrée en France et travaillant à Paris à la Fondation Curie, Nadine Dobrovolskaia-Zavadskaia (1878-1954). Cet article, et les suivants sur ce même sujet, ont été relayés par un article essentiel de Leslie Clarence Dunn (1893-1974) en 1953 qui utilisa à partir de 1932, les souris mutantes d'abord étudiées par cette chercheuse. Les articles de Nadine Dobrovolskaia-Zavadskaia sont considérés par les chercheurs, comme des textes fondateurs de la génétique du développement chez les mammifères. Nadine Dobrovolskaia y décrit et établit la génétique d'une anomalie de la formation de la queue de la souris (absente, courte, filiforme ou en tire-bouchon suivant les cas), due à un facteur dit Brachyoure et ses allèles, létal à l'état homozygote et se manifestant aussi par une distorsion de sa transmission par les mâles. Ce facteur a permis de définir un locus génétique, le locus-T/t dans lequel T est pour Tailless et t pour ses différents allèles qui agissent à plusieurs niveaux du développement embryonnaire. Cet article se propose, après présentation, d'offrir une bibliographie quasi complète du travail de la chercheuse.

International audience; The successful results of the treatment of diphtheria by serum taken fromhorses immunized against the diphtheria toxin, were disclosed by Émile Roux atthe International Congress of Hygiene held in Budapest on September 5, 1894.The Behring’s-Roux’ method (it would be unfair to attribute serotherapy to theFrench, since the German contribution has been decisive) resulted in a 2 to 3fold decrease of the lethality among the sick children included in the clinicaltrials. Actually the series of tests of anti-diphtheria sera certainly constitutes thefirst set of random human clinical trial of a drug.The production of serum followed simple and easily reproducible procedures.In about a year, serotherapy had become the dominant treatment of diphtheria,and death toll was reduced from about 50% to 10-15 % and even less in mostcountries in Europe and out of Europe. Diphtheria serotherapy had become “theherald of modern medicine”, i. e. a medical approach to a disease exclusivelybased on the development of the scientific programme of microbiology.Serotherapy introduced decisive changes in the manner infectious diseaseswere considered. Everyone now expected that they will, sooner or later, bedefeated by the same or similar scientific strategies. It did not matter much thatsera against other microbes did not keep their promises: the belief in theefficiency of sera did not fade out in the public.The production of anti-diphtheria sera could be taken as the birth ofpharmaceutical biotechnologies, more than the production of anti-anthrax vaccines and of vaccine itself. It anyway imposed the fast passage fromlaboratory to industry. The entirely novel drug introduced to a series of problemswhich had not previously been imagined. In Germany, the production of antidiphtheriaserum was, from its very beginning, the result of a close collaborationbetween laboratories, industry and the relevant Imperial Health Services, thusjoining already existing administrative and technical structures. In France,pharmaceutical industry merely did not exist and had to be built up. The InstitutPasteur was cleaver enough to retain the monopoly of production and qualitycontrol of anti-diphtheria serum, actually of all sera to be later produced.However, well controlled norms of quality were not part of the culture of thenew-born Institut Pasteur. The production of sera and their trade by the InstitutPasteur forced the latter to introduce German-derived procedures and normsconcerning the standardization of sera. The Institut also had to develop theproduction of sera under highly controlled conditions in continuously adaptedand improved facilities located in Marnes-la-Coquette, a small town in thevicinity of Paris.The production and trade of anti-diphtheria serum clearly is at the origin ofboth the international reputation and of the wealth of Institut Pasteur whichguaranteed its independence with respect to French universities. Not only did itcontribute to firmly establish the institution in the French medical and scientificlandscape, but it also permitted Émile Roux to implement his long term project:physically couple the laboratories to a production center and to a hospital wherenew drugs, whatever of biological or chemical origin, would be tested onpatients. Indeed, the budgetary surplus left by the sales of anti-diphteria serumpermitted the the building of a private hospital primarily devoted to infectiousdiseases, a kind of model hospital, and the creation of laboratories of chemistryincluding a fast growing laboratory of therapeutic chemistry, itself largelyinspired by German chemistry. The project of Émile Roux was fulfilled a fewyears before WWI and was taken as a model by several foreign countries such asBrazil.

International audience; The successful results of the treatment of diphtheria by serum taken fromhorses immunized against the diphtheria toxin, were disclosed by Émile Roux atthe International Congress of Hygiene held in Budapest on September 5, 1894.The Behring’s-Roux’ method (it would be unfair to attribute serotherapy to theFrench, since the German contribution has been decisive) resulted in a 2 to 3fold decrease of the lethality among the sick children included in the clinicaltrials. Actually the series of tests of anti-diphtheria sera certainly constitutes thefirst set of random human clinical trial of a drug.The production of serum followed simple and easily reproducible procedures.In about a year, serotherapy had become the dominant treatment of diphtheria,and death toll was reduced from about 50% to 10-15 % and even less in mostcountries in Europe and out of Europe. Diphtheria serotherapy had become “theherald of modern medicine”, i. e. a medical approach to a disease exclusivelybased on the development of the scientific programme of microbiology.Serotherapy introduced decisive changes in the manner infectious diseaseswere considered. Everyone now expected that they will, sooner or later, bedefeated by the same or similar scientific strategies. It did not matter much thatsera against other microbes did not keep their promises: the belief in theefficiency of sera did not fade out in the public.The production of anti-diphtheria sera could be taken as the birth ofpharmaceutical biotechnologies, more than the production of anti-anthrax vaccines and of vaccine itself. It anyway imposed the fast passage fromlaboratory to industry. The entirely novel drug introduced to a series of problemswhich had not previously been imagined. In Germany, the production of antidiphtheriaserum was, from its very beginning, the result of a close collaborationbetween laboratories, industry and the relevant Imperial Health Services, thusjoining already existing administrative and technical structures. In France,pharmaceutical industry merely did not exist and had to be built up. The InstitutPasteur was cleaver enough to retain the monopoly of production and qualitycontrol of anti-diphtheria serum, actually of all sera to be later produced.However, well controlled norms of quality were not part of the culture of thenew-born Institut Pasteur. The production of sera and their trade by the InstitutPasteur forced the latter to introduce German-derived procedures and normsconcerning the standardization of sera. The Institut also had to develop theproduction of sera under highly controlled conditions in continuously adaptedand improved facilities located in Marnes-la-Coquette, a small town in thevicinity of Paris.The production and trade of anti-diphtheria serum clearly is at the origin ofboth the international reputation and of the wealth of Institut Pasteur whichguaranteed its independence with respect to French universities. Not only did itcontribute to firmly establish the institution in the French medical and scientificlandscape, but it also permitted Émile Roux to implement his long term project:physically couple the laboratories to a production center and to a hospital wherenew drugs, whatever of biological or chemical origin, would be tested onpatients. Indeed, the budgetary surplus left by the sales of anti-diphteria serumpermitted the the building of a private hospital primarily devoted to infectiousdiseases, a kind of model hospital, and the creation of laboratories of chemistryincluding a fast growing laboratory of therapeutic chemistry, itself largelyinspired by German chemistry. The project of Émile Roux was fulfilled a fewyears before WWI and was taken as a model by several foreign countries such asBrazil.

As soon as they were published early in 1909, Chagas's articles on Trypanosoma cruzi and American trypanosomiasis became the topic of discussions in France. The description of T. cruzi and Chagas disease was added to parasitology textbooks as early as 1912, and elicited active research, particularly on the part of French parasitologist Emile Brumpt. He contributed towards eluciding the lifecycle of T. cruzi and the different ways it could infect humans. Laboratory research on T. cruzi was interrupted by First World War and was not resumed afterwards on the same scale, although interest in the epidemiology of Chagas disease continued. Assim que os artigos de Carlos Chagas sobre o Tripanosoma cruzi e a tripanosomíase americana foram publicados em 1909, passaram a ser tema de discussões na França. A descrição do T. cruzi e da doença de Chagas foram adicionadas a livros de parasitologia ainda em 1912, e ajudaram a elucidar pesquisas, particularmente as que vinham sendo desenvolvidas pelo parasitologista Emile Brumpt. Ele contribuiu para o esclarecimento do ciclo de vida do T. cruzi e as diferentes maneiras que poderiam infectar osseres humanos. Pesquisa de laboratório sobre o T. cruzi foi interrompida durante a Primeira Guerra Mundial e não foi retomada mais tarde na mesma escala, a despeito do fato de os estudos epidemiológicos sobre a doença de Chagas continuarem despertando muito interesse.

Cet article est destiné à La Science au Présent, Editions de l'Encyclopaedia universalis, Paris.; Ce débat porte sur l'application au 1er janvier 2008 du décret d'interdiction de fumer dans les lieux publics. En France, elle n'a provoqué que peu de protestations, des propos désabusés des buralistes et la faillite de bars à chicha. Comment a-t-on réussi à faire accepter, du moins en apparence, l'interdiction d'une pratique sociale triomphante il y a encore 30 ans ? Il ne s'agit pas de contester la nocivité des substances de toutes espèces contenues dans le tabac et les papiers à cigarettes. Mais, le point qui nous intéresse ici est d'examiner comment on est passé de la valorisation sociale d'une pratique à une politique de prévention ciblée puis à un jeu de mesures qui paraissent relever du même objectif mais qui concernent finalement la construction d'une nouvelle norme sociale.

Cet article est destiné à La Science au Présent, Editions de l'Encyclopaedia Universalis, Paris.; Il est de la liberté de chacun de tenir le créationnisme pour la vérité. Le point important commun aux tentatives créationnistes est de tenter de donner à une explication religieuse, le même statut épistémologique qu'une théorie scientifique et par conséquent de tenter de l'imposer comme un enseignement scientifique. C'est cette entreprise que les scientifiques et les philosophes des sciences contestent. Le créationnisme a un statut métaphysique inhérent à la révélation ; le statut privilégié de l'évolution humaine suppose l'existence d'un projet divin, ce qui ne constitue pas une théorie scientifique. La théorie de l'évolution assemble les données acquises par les sciences du vivant en un ensemble ordonné et prédictif : elle a un statut de théorie scientifique. Dogme religieux et théorie scientifique n'ont pas le même statut épistéomologique et ceci devrait suffire à clarifier le problème. Il n'en reste pas moins que le bon accueil persistant fait aux différentes formes du créationnisme traduit le fait qu'une théorie scientifique a bien de la peine à être comprise lorsqu'elle ne va pas dans le sens de l'évidence sensible et surtout lorsqu'elle bouscule certaines notions fondatrices d'une des bases de la culture occidentale.

The present paper is intended to be published in“ Wertbestimmungen-Evaluations. Standardising therapeutic agents 1890-1930”; The present paper thus primarily deals with the manner a “culture of quantification and standardization” has been introduced at the Institut Pasteur or, more precisely, has been imposed by Emile Roux (1853-1933) and his co-workers, as part of Roux's general project on the approach to infectious diseases, based on the direct coupling of research in microbiology to the production of drugs of biological or chemical origin by the institute, and to medical care in Pasteur's hospital located on the campus itself.

The present article is the on-line equivalent of Preprint 310 of the Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte (Berlin) and has been contributed as an oral communication in September 2005.; On my side, I believe that I first encountered the expression “molecular biology” at the very beginning of my thesis work, in October 1964, when seeing an issue of the Journal of Molecular Biology, a journal then considered in the laboratory the smartest of the best journals in modern biology. However, even in Monod's and Jacob's laboratories, the words “molecular biology” were not in routine use among us, whereas bacterial genetics, gene expression, negative and positive regulation, models, biophysics, operon, replication and replicon, etc were much more frequently used to speak of what was going on. In my opinion, the stepwise generalization of the use of “molecular” and “molecular biology” reflects distinct periods of doing science through molecular approaches, but does not attribute a unified meaning to the expression “molecular biology”.