If you've spent enough time wandering through flea markets or antique shops, you've likely walked past, and perhaps even eyed, a large ceramic jug or a thin, shiny cylinder labeled a Pasteur-Chamberland filter. The jugs look like tabletop lemonade dispensers with a spigot on the side. They are expensive—too expensive for me— but I can afford the metal cylinders, which are generally ignored by the antiquing crowd. The metal cylinders were designed with a spigot on the front and fittings on the back to connect to a water pipe. Occasionally the cylinders still contain a fired-clay filter. I have spent 30 years searching for these tubes, and in that time have found and purchased two with filters still inside. If there were ever an Antiques Roadshow for the history of science, these simple ceramic filters would get top billing: they helped create a new branch of medical knowledge.
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