Béchamp or Pasteur?: A Lost Chapter in the History of Biology by Ethel Hume

Folks, if you have not read “Blood and Its Third Element” by Antoine Béchamp himself, I strongly recommend you read this book first. The reason is because in this book, the Author, Ethel Douglas Hume gives you the full exposé in details of a complete history of the scientific and political conflict that destroyed a true biologist genius Antoine Béchamp and catapulted a crook and plagiarist, Louis Pasteur into the altar “saint of virology and medicine” of the world!

Ethel Douglas Hume, she wrote this detailed account in early in the 20th century, but it has been suppressed and attempted to be deleted from the scientific record by the whole evil power machine. It has been the forbidden knowledge ever since that will destroy any men and women’s life and career in medical world who dare to just mention its “name” with “curiosity”. That’s how and why the “virus reification fallacy” keeps perpetuating thicker and deeper to this day!

Well, Nicolas Tesla was not lonely in this modern hole of memory of world science at all!

So don’t be surprised that even under this current “information Technology age” with the omnipresent www. internet there is just a handful of well informed people out of billions being aware of the existence of the “No Virus Group”, let alone understanding the criminal and deceitful nature of the so-called virology and its so-called “vaccine” and the pharma/medical industry complex as a whole.

And don’t even be surprised that the “No Virus Group” members have not passed 2 digits despite there are millions medicine men and women around the world!

Please find time to read this book, decide for yourself, folks.

https://archive.org/details/bechamp-or-pasteur-a-lost-chapter-in-the-history-of-biology-344-pgs_202106

Or You can download the whole set of books on this particular issue at my “mediafire”

https://www.mediafire.com/folder/qw2ztts7vv37m/Bechamp

Please, for the sake of common humanity, do UNLEARN to RELEARN, folks!

Béchamp or Pasteur? A Lost Chapter in the History of Biology

FIRST PUBLISHED : 1923

SECOND EDITION : 1932

NOTE TO SECOND EDITION

Since the first edition of this book was sold out, two of its best friends, one in this country and one in America, have passed into the Great Beyond. Yet their influence stirs in this new edition, which has found other good friends to whom, for their help and encouragement, I tender grateful thanks.

Evidence of growing attention to Béchamp reaches us from all parts. In 1927, an account of him, written by Fr. Guermonprez, was published in Paris by Amedee Legrand, 93, Boulevard Saint-Germain. In the same year, on the 1 8th September, a bust of the great French scientist was unveiled at Bassing, his birthplace, before a distinguished gathering, when his genius and discoveries were loudly eulogised. News comes from New Zealand of successful medical work on the lines of Béchamp's teaching. In the United States of America, a text-book on Bacteriology is being written by Dr. Weiant, in collabora- tion with Dr. J. Robinson Verner, in which reference is to be made to Béchamp or Pasteur? and Béchamp's labours are to be recognised. From far away Mexico, a request comes from Dr. Hernan Alpuche Solis to be allowed to undertake a Spanish translation of Béchamp or Pasteur? in order, as he puts it, "to publish the truth throughout the world."

Denials of the claims made for Béchamp's discoveries have been impossible; for, as Fr. Guermonprez writes, on page 18 of his Béchamp: Etudes et Souvenirs: — "To get a right idea of questions of priority, the works of Pasteur, Duclaux, or their pupils, are not the ones to study; but, instead, the impartial records of the learned Societies, particularly those of the Academy of Sciences of the Institute of France." There, in the cold type of the printed word, the precedence of Béchamp's pronounce- ments to Pasteur's stands secure for good and all. Never- theless, this personal side of the subject, in spite of its importance from the point of view of historical justice, is of less consequence than the results of building medical practice upon the insecure theoretical foundation de- scribed by Sir Almroth Wright as "the Pasteurian Decalogue." Of these commandments, he states, as reported in The Times of November 27th, 1931, "very few remain intact." On the other hand, there are increasing indications of modern medical views converging towards the microzymian doctrine. For instance, in Health, Disease and Integration, by H. P. Newsholme, M.A., M.D., F.R.C.P., B.Sc, P.D.H., a book published in 1929, on page 64, we find "the idea of a possible autonomous (self- produced) living enzyme or virus capable of giving rise to disease and capable of multiplication by reason of its living quality." The science of bio-chemistry, which occupies so wide a field to-day, is in no small measure an expansion of the teaching of Béchamp; while the remark- able results of X-Radiation lend support to his contention that in the microzymas (of the chromatinic threads) lies the secret of heredity. Reference may be made to the first of two articles by G. P. Haskins in the General Electric Review of July, 1932.

Of Béchamp, a story is related of how, when a tiny child, he was once caught telling a lie. His mother, on hearing of this on her return home in the evening, then and there turned her small son out of bed and, while whipping him soundly, impressed upon him her horror of falsehood. Béchamp, it is said, attributed his passionate regard for exactitude to this early lesson, which he never forgot. To all others, known and unknown, to whom Truth is precious, I am proud to dedicate the new edition of this book.

E. DOUGLAS HUME.

Woodford Wells. October, 1932.

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FOREWORD

The progress of natural science, like all other depart- ments of knowledge, is associated with the personalities of its workers, and it often happens that the study of a man's life is the surest guide not only to the history of the science, but also to the discovery of neglected records made in days gone by. It is always a matter of absorbing interest to know how and by whom the foundations of natural truth, upon which we build our own more modern structures, were laid. We have long been accustomed to build on stones placed in position by the world-famed Pasteur, but it is not commonly recognized that many of these stones rest upon the deeper foundations laid by Pasteur's con- temporary, Antoine Béchamp. It is fitting that one should hesitate to disturb stones set by those already gone from us, but when a substructure has once been revealed, there can be no question as to the liberty of extending the in- vestigation. Probably no reader of this book will at first be prepared to accept much that is said in criticism of Pasteur and in worship of Béchamp, but as the perusal proceeds, his eyes will be opened to many references for which the author is in no way responsible except for their collation. It is greatly to be desired that the fundamental work of Béchamp should be far more widely recognized, and a debt is due to the author for throwing the limelight on his work.

S. JUDD LEWIS.

==

PREFACE

Many years ago, in New York, Dr. Montague R. Lever- son chanced to come upon the writings of Pierre Jacques Antoine Béchamp. So greatly did he become imbued with the views of the French Professor, that he seized the first opportunity to travel to Paris for the purpose of making the latter's acquaintance. He was fortunate enough to arrive some months before the death of the great scientist and to receive from him in person an account of his dis- coveries and his criticisms of science, ancient and modern.

Henceforward it became the dearest wish of Dr. Lever- son to place the case of Professor Béchamp, especially in regard to his relations with Pasteur, before the scientific world. Unable, owing to his great age, to carry out this project, the present writer, author of a short treatise on Béchamp, Life's Primal Architects, which originally ap- peared in The Forum, was pressed to undertake the work. Its aim is to arouse the interest of those more qualified to do justice to the memory of a genius, whose disadvantage it was to have lived far ahead of the scientific thought of his own day. For all deficiency in this presentment of his teachings, it is begged that the writer may be blamed and not the doctrines of the great teacher, to whose original works it is strongly urged that the reader should turn.

It only remains to mention those whose help has been of the greatest service. It is deeply to be regretted that the late Mr. R. A. Streatfeild, of the Department of Printed Books in the British Museum, is no longer here to receive the thanks so justly his due. These are most cordially rendered to Mr. L. H. E. Taylor, of the same Department, and to all the officials of the North Library for constant kindness and courtesy and for the facilities so generously afforded for research work. To M. Edouard Gasser, the son-in-law of Professor Béchamp, great indebtedness must be expressed for particulars of the scientist's life and family. No words can adequately acknowledge the gratitude owed to Miss Lily Loat for unfailing assistance in regard to any point at issue, as well as for hours spent in proof- reading and in helping towards the preparation of the Index. The business arrangements in America and the acquirement of U.S.A. copyright could never have been accomplished without the very kind help of Mrs. Little and Mr. R. B. Pearson of Chicago, to whom warm thanks are extended. Last, but far from least, acknowledgment is gratefully made to the anonymous philanthropist whose generosity has brought about the publication of this book.

July, 1922.

E. DOUGLAS HUME.

BÉCHAMP OR PASTEUR? A Lost Chapter in the History of Biology

INTRODUCTORY

CHAPTER I

ANTOINE BÉCHAMP

At Villeneuve L'Étang, not far from Paris, on the 28th September, 1895, the death took place of a Frenchman who has been acclaimed as a rare luminary of science, a supreme benefactor of humanity. World-wide mourning, national honours, pompous funeral obsequies, lengthy newspaper articles, tributes public and private, attended the passing of Louis Pasteur. His life has been fully recorded; statues preserve his likeness; his name has been given to a system, and Institutes that follow his methods have sprung into being all over the world. Never has Dame Fortune been more prodigal with bounties than in the case of this chemist who, without ever being a doctor, dared nothing less than to profess to revolutionise medi- cine. According to his own dictum, the testimony of subsequent centuries delivers the true verdict upon a scientist, and adopting Pasteur's opinion as well as, in all humility, his audacity, we dare to take it upon ourselves to search that testimony. What do we find?

Nothing less than a lost chapter in the history of biology, a chapter which it seems essential should be rediscovered and assigned to its proper place. For knowledge of it might tend, firstly, to alter the whole trend of modern medicine, and, secondly, to prove the outstanding French genius of the nineteenth century to have been actually another than Louis Pasteur!

For indeed this astonishing chapter denies the prevalent belief that Pasteur was the first to explain the mystery of fermen tation, the cause of t he dis^a^ es^r^ ^worms , and the cause of vinous fermentation; moreover, it shows that his theories ot micro-organisms 3m c el : eTln^a3c"essentials from those of the observer who seems to have been the real originator of the discoveries to which Pasteur has always laid claim. And so, since Truth is our object, we venture to ask for patient and impartial consideration ofthe facts that we bring forward in regard to the life-work of two French scientists, one of whom is barely known to the present generation, though much of its knowledge has been derived from him, while the name of the other has become a household word.

Twelve and a half years after the death of Pasteur, on the 15th April, 1908, there passed away in a modest dwelling in the student quarter of Paris an old man in his ninety-second year. His funeral was attended by a platoon of soldiers, for the nonogenarian,^Professor Pierre Jacques Antoine Béchamp, had a right to thisTiolnourTas he Ead been "^"Chevalier ~ of theTTegion ~5F Honour. Otherwise the quiet obsequies were attended only by the dead man's two daughters-in-law, several of his grandsons, a few of his old friends and an American admirer. 1 No pomp and circumstance in the last ceremonies indicated the passing of a great scientist, but, after all, it was far from the first time that a man's contemporaries had neglected his worth. Rather more than a^ cxiUm^LJ^arlier, another Antoine, whose surname was Lav^me£ 1 Jh 1 a^^eendone to death H5y TuT^countrymen, with the comment— ^The Republic ha^Tio^ie^orot savaritsP^~Axid now^witli^cant public notice7^waTTaiorTnTts~Iast resting-place the body of perhaps an even greater scientist than the great Lavoisier, since this other Antoine, whose surname was Béchamp, s eems to have been the first clear, exponent of fermelitMive" mysteries and the pioneer of authentic discovery in the realm of "the immeasurably small."

1 Dr. Montague R. Leverson.

In the year in which he died, eight pages of the Moniteur Scientifique were required to set forth a list of his scientific works. The mere mention of his titles may suggest an idea of the stupendous labours of his long and arduous career. They were as follows:

Master of Pharmacy. Doctor of Science. Doctor of Medicine.

Professor of Medical Chemistry and Pharmacy at the Faculty of Medicine at Montpellier.

Fellow and Professor of Physics and of Toxicology at the Higher School of Pharmacy at Strasbourg and Professor of Chemistry of the same town.

Corresponding Member of the Imperial Academy of Medi- cine of France and of the Society of Pharmacy of Paris.

Member of the Agricultural Society of Herault and of the Linnaean Society of the Department of Maine et Loire.

Gold Medallist of the Industrial Society of Mulhouse for the discovery of a cheap process for the manufacture of aniline and of many colours derived from this substance.

Silver Medallist of the Committee of Historic Works and of Learned Societies for works upon the production of wine.

Professor of Biological Chemistry and Dean of the Faculty of Medicine of Lille.

Honorary Titles

Officer of Public Instruction. Chevalier of the Legion of Honour. Commander of the Rose of Brazil.

Long though his life was, considerably outstretching the rather arbitrary limit of the Psalmist, it can only seem in- credibly short when compared with a list of discoveries phenomenal for the life-span of one man. And as the history of the foundations of biology, as well as the work of Louis Pasteur, are both intricately connected with this extended career of usefulness, we will try to sketch a faint outline of the life-story of Pierre Jacques AntoineBéchamp.

He was born during the epoch that had just witnessed the finish of the Napoleonic wars, for it was on the 16th October, 1816, that he first saw light at Bassing in Lor- raine, where his father owned a flour mill. The boy was only eleven, when a change in his life occurred. His mother's brother, who held the post of French Consul at Bucharest, paid the Béchamps a visit and was struck by the intelligence and aptitude of young Antoine. He grew anxious to give him better opportunities than he would be likely to meet with in his quiet country home. We have not heard much of Antoine's mother; but when we find that his parents unselfishly allowed him, for his own good, to be taken away from them at the early age of eleven, we may be fairly certain that she was a clever, far-seeing woman, who might perhaps support Schopenhauer's theory that a man's mother is of more importance to him than his father in the transmission of brains! Be that as it may, when the uncle's visit ended, the small nephew went with him and the two undertook together the long and, in those days, very wearisome coach journey from Nancy to Bucharest.

It thus came about that Antoine saw much of the world and gained a thorough knowledge of a fresh language, advantages that strengthened and developed his alert intellect. Unfortunately, his kind relative died after a few years and the boy was left to face the battle of life alone. Friends came to his help and placed him as assistant to a chemist, who allowed him to attend classes at the Uni- versity, where his brilliant genius made all learning easy and in 1833, without any difficulty, he obtained a diploma in pharmacy. In his youthful proficiency he presents a contrast to Pasteur, who, in his school days, was pro- nounced to be only an average pupil, and later, by an examiner, to be mediocre in chemistry.

Antoine was still under twenty when he returned to his native land and, after visiting his parents, started work at a chemist's in Strasbourg, which city at that time, with the rest of Alsace and Lorraine, formed part of France. His extraordinary powers of work were soon made manifest. Much of his spare time was devoted to the study of his own language, in which he acquired the polish of style that was to stand him in good stead in his future lectures and literary labours. All the while, he continued his University course at the Academy of Strasbourg until he became qualified as a chemist. On obtaining his degree, he set up independently at Benfeld in Alsace, where he met and married Mile. Clementine Mertian, the daughter of a retired tobacco and beet-sugar merchant, who made him a capable wife. Science claimed so much of her husband's time that the training of their four children and the whole management of the household were left almost entirely to Mme. Béchamp.

Soon after the marriage, Antoine returned to Strasbourg to set up as a chemist; but this work did not nearly satisfy his vigorous energy and he now prepared himself to occu- py a Professor's Chair. He soon realised his aim. In a short time he acquired the diplomas of Bachelor of Science and Letters and of Doctor of Medicine and was nominated Professor at the School of Pharmacy in the Faculty of Science, where for a time he took the place of his colleague, Pasteur.

These notable rivals both worked in the full flush of early enthusiasm in the capital of Alsace. But a difference al- ready marked their methods. Pasteur seems never to have left an effort of his unrecorded; every idea as to the tartaric and racemic acids, about which he was then busied, appears to have been confided to others; letters detailed his endeavours; his invaluable patron, the scientist, Biot, was especially taken into his confidence, while his ap- proaching honour and glory were never allowed to absent themselves from his friends' minds. He wrote to Chappuis that, on account of his hard work, he was "often scolded by Mme. Pasteur, but I console her by telling her that I shall lead her to fame." 1

From the start, Antoine Béchamp was utterly indifferent to personal ambition. Never of a pushing temperament, he made no effort to seek out influential acquaintances and advertise his successes to them. Self-oblivious, he was entirely concentrated upon nature and its mysteries, never resting till something of these should be revealed. Self- glorification never occurred to him and while the doings of Pasteur were being made public property, Béchamp shut in his quiet laboratory, was immersed in discoveries, which were simply published later in scientific records without being heralded by self-advertisement.

The work that he accomplished at Strasbourg was pro- lific in benefits for France in particular and for the world at large. It was there that his studies led him to the dis- covery of a new and cheap method of producing aniline, which up to 1854 had been so costly as to be useless for commercial purposes. The German chemist, August Wilhelm von Hofmann, who for many years carried on work in England, after investigating the results of earlier discoveries, produced aniline by subjecting a mixture of nitro-benzene and alcohol to the reducing action of hydrochloric acid and zinc. Béchamp, in 1852, showed that the use of alcohol was unnecessary and that zinc could be replaced by iron filings, also that either acetic or hydrochloric acid may be used. 1 By thus simplifying and cheapening the process, he conferred an enormous benefit on chemical industry, for the cost of aniline fell at once to 20 francs and later to 15 francs a kilogramme; while, moreover, his invention has continued in use to the present day: it is still the foundation of the modern method of manufacture in the great aniline dye industry, which has been all too much appropriated by Germany. The Maison Renard, of Lyons, hearing of Béchamp's discovery, applied to him and with his help succeeded in a cheap production of fuchsin, otherwise magenta, and its varieties. The only return made to Béchamp, however, was the award, ten years or so later, of a gold medal from the Industrial Society of Mulhouse. Neither does any recognition seem to have been made to him for his dis- covery of a compound of arsenic acid and aniline, which, under the name of atoxyl, is used in the treatment of skin diseases and of sleeping sickness.

1 Confirmed in Richter's Organic Chemistry and in Thorpe's Dictionary of Applied Chemistry (1921).

Another work of his that was to prove especially prolific in results was his application of polarimetric measure- ments to his observations on the soluble ferments. The polarimeter, that instrument in which light is polarised or made to vibrate in one plane by means of one Nicol prism and examined by means of a second Nicol prism, was utilised by him in experiments, the general results of which were that he was enabled before any other worker to define and isolate a number of ferments to which he was also the first to give the name of zymases. In dealing with this work later on, we shall show how his discovery, even to its nomenclature, has been attributed to somebody else. 1

So interminable were Béchamp's labours, so numerous his discoveries, that it is hard to know which to single out. He studied the monobasic acids and their ethers and in- vented a method of preparing the chlorides of acid radicles be means of the derivatives of phosphorous. He made researches upon lignin, the characteristic constituent of the cell-walls of wood-cells, and showed clearly the difference between the substituted organic nitro-com- pounds, like ethyl nitrite and the nitro-paraffins. As we j shall see subsequently, he was the first really to establish the occurrence in, and distribution by, the atmosphere of micro-organisms, such as yeast, and to explain the direct agent in fermentation to be the soluble ferment secreted by the cells of yeast and other such moulds. Cleverest of/ chemists and microscopists, he was also a naturalist and a doctor, and gradually his chemical work led him on to his astonishing biological discoveries. The explanation of the formation of urea by the oxidation of albuminoid matters and his clear demonstrations of the specificity of the latter formed only part of the strenuous labours that led to his discovery that the "molecular granulations" of the cells assist in fermentation, that they are autonomous entities, the living principle, vegetable and animal, the originators of bodily processes, the factors of pathological conditions, the agents of decomposition, while, incidentally, he believed them to be capable of evolving into bacteria.

These conclusions may not all yet be adopted, but as so many of Béchamp's other teachings have come, by the independent work of some and the plagiarisms of others, to be generally accepted, it would seem, to say the least of it, possible that his amazing revelation of nature's biological processes may become public property and we wish to ensure the recognition of its legitimate parentage.

He showed that the cell must no longer be regarded in accordance with Virchow's view as the unit of life, since it is built up by the cell-granules within it. He it was, it seems, who first drew attention to the union of these same cell-granules, which he called "microzymas," and to the rod-like groupings that result, which now go by the name of chromosomes. He laid great stress upon the im- measurable minuteness of his microzymas and from his teaching we can well infer his agreement in the belief that myriads must be ultra-microscopic, although he had far too exact a mind to descant in modern airy fashion upon matters that are purely conjectural. Where he exhibited his practical genius was that, instead of drawing fancy pictures of primeval developments of chromatin, he traced by rigid experiment the actual building up of cells from the "molecular granulations," that is, microsomes, or microzymas. It was never his method to draw conclusions except from a sure experimental basis.

It was while Béchamp was undertaking his researches upon fermentation, at the very time that he was engaged upon what will prove to be part of what he named his "Beacon Experiment," that he was called from Strasbourg to Montpellier to occupy the Chair of Medical Chemistry and Pharmacy at that famous University.

The period that followed seems likely to have been the happiest of his life. Filling an important position, he carried out his duties with the utmost distinction, his demonstrations before students gaining great renown. He had already made and was further developing extraordin- ary discoveries, which were arresting attention both in and beyond France. These gained him the devoted friendship of his admirer and future collaborator, Professor Estor, a physiologist and histologist, who combined the duties of physician and surgeon at the Montpellier Hospital. Béchamp, also, had the advantage of medical training, and though he never practised as a doctor, his pathological studies were continuous and he was daily in touch with the work of physicians and surgeons, such as Courty, besides Estor, and himself took full advantage of the experience to be obtained in hospital wards. His and Estor's more theoretical studies were checked and enlarged by their intimacy with the vast experiments that Nature carries out in disease. Both were men accustomed to the strictness of the experimental methods of Lavoisier and their clinical and laboratory work moved side by side, the one confirm- ing and establishing the other.

Without ever neglecting his professorial duties, sufficiently/arduous to absorb the whole time of an ordin- ary mortal, Béchamp yet laboured incessantly, both by himself and with Professor Estor, at the problems that his researches were developing. A little band of pupils gathered about them, helping them, while far into the night constantly worked the two enthusiasts, often, as Béchamp tells us, 1 quite awestruck by the wonderful con- firmation of their ideas and verification of their theories. Such toil could only be continued by one possessed of Professor Béchamp's exuberant health and vitality, and it possibly told upon Professor Estor, whose early death was attributed partly to his disappointment that the popular germ-theory of disease, in all its crudity, should have seized public attention instead of the great microzymian doctrine of the building up of all organised matter from the microzymas, or "molecular granulations" of cells.

His incessant work, which kept him much apart from his family, was the only hindrance to Béchamp's enjoy- ment of a happy domestic life. An excellent husband and father, he was always thoughtful for others, and in all his dealings was as kind as he was firm. His lectures were

made delightful by his easy eloquence and perfect enuncia- tion, no less than by the clearness of his reasoning; while his social manner possessed the grace and courtliness that are typical of the polished inhabitants of la belle France. Well above medium height, his clear eye and ruddy com- plexion gave unstinted proof of the perfect sanity of mind and body that he was blessed with throughout the whole course of his long life. His powerful forehead testified to the strength of his intellect, while his nose was of the large aquiline type that so usually accompanies creative force and energy. His hair was brown and his forceful eyebrows were strongly marked above the large eyes of an idealist, a dreamer of dreams, which in his case were so often realised.

To the physiognomist, a comparison of the looks of the rivals, Béchamp and Pasteur, gives a key to their respective scientific attitudes. Alert determination is the chief characteristic of Pasteur's features; intellectual idealism of Béchamp's. Pasteur approached science from the com- mercial, that is to say, the utilitarian standpoint, no less self-advantageous because professedly to benefit the world. Béchamp had ever the artist's outlook. His thirst was for knowledge, independent of profit; his longing to penetrate the unexplored realm of Nature's secrets; the outer world was forgotten, while, pace by pace, he followed in the footsteps of truth. It never occurred to him to indite compliments to influential acquaintances and announce at the same time the dawning of a new idea. The lessons he learned in his quests he duly noted and communicated to the French Academy of Science and at first ignored the fact that his observations were pirated. When finally his silence changed to protest, we shall see, as we proceed, that his patience had been stretched to snapping point. Himself so exact in his recognition of every crumb of knowledge owed to another, he could only feel contempt for pilferers of other men's ideas, while his exuberant vigour and energy fired him with uncompromising opposi- tion to those who, not content with reaping where he had sown, trampled with their distortions upon a harvest that might have been so abundant in results.

It was during the years spent at Montpellier that his open rupture came with Pasteur, on account, as we shall see farther on, of the latter's appropriation of Béchamp's explanation of the causes of the two diseases that were then devastating silk-worms and ruining the French silk industry. Though there was no escaping the fact that Pasteur's opinions on the subject had been erroneous until Béchamp had provided the proper solution, no voices were raised in condemnation of the former's methods. He had already gained the ear of the public and acquired Imperial patronage. In all ages, the man of influence is a hard one to cross swords with, as Béchamp was to find.

But at Montpellier he had not yet drained the cup of life's bitterness. Hope still swelled high for the future, especially when, as time passed, a new assistant rose up, and Béchamp's elder son, Joseph, became a sharer in his work. This young man, whose lovable character made him a general favourite, took at an early age his degree in science, including chemistry, besides qualifying as a doctor of medicine. It seemed certain that he would some day succeed his father at the University.

But for France a sad day was dawning and for Béchamp a disastrous change in his career. 1870 came with the descent of the Prussians and the humiliation of the fair land of France. Those districts of Alsace and Lorraine, the home of Béchamp's young boyhood and early manhood, were torn away, their populace left lamenting: — "Though our speech may be German, our hearts are French!" France, stricken, was far from crushed. A longing stirred to show that, though despoiled of territory, she could yet dominate in the world of thought. So it came about that, as an intellectual stimulus, Universities were founded in different places under ecclesiastical patronage. It was hoped that the Church of Rome might hold sway over mental activities. Lille was one of such centres, and about the year 1874, Béchamp was importuned to take the post there of Dean of the Free Faculty of Medicine. Some wise friends advised him not to leave Montpellier; but, on the other side, he was bombarded with entreaties to take up work at Lille. Finally, and entirely from patriotic ^motives, he allowed himself to be persuaded to leave his clear University of Montpellier, teeming with happy memories of successful work. His altruistic wish to benefit at one and the same time France and science brought about his acquiescence in the change. He moved to the North with his son Joseph, the latter having been ap- pointed Professor of Toxicology at Lille.

All might have gone well had it not been for the clerical Directors of the house of learning, whose want of faith was well advertised by their intellectual timidity. Like all who fence in belief with dogma — and religious priesthoods are by no means the only builders of such enclosures — the anxious ecclesiastics were determined to set boundaries to science and keep thought within barriers. The inevitable result was continual friction between the clerical Directors and the lay Professors of the University.

Unfortunately, IJechamp entered this unpropitious atmosphere just at the moment when he was putting the finishing touches to his exposition of the microzymas, that is, the infinitesimal cellular granules, now known as microsomes, which he considered to be the formative agents of the cells which compose all animal and vegetable forms £ This stupendous conception of the processes of Creation at once raised a note of protest from the narrow- minded clerics. Here was a man who dared to profess to describe Nature's methods, instead of complacently resigning them to mystery.

Pasteur seems never to have fallen foul of the ecclesi- astics; partly, perhaps, because he did not come into the same close contact; but more probably because, with his worldly wisdom, he was content to profess leadership in science and discipleship in religion; besides, had he not also gained the patronage of the great? Béchamp's deep insight had taught him the connection between science and religion, the one a search after truth, and the other, the effort to live up to individual belief. His faith had widened to a breadth incomprehensible to dogmatic bigots, so that even the appointment of a Commission was sug- gested to recommend the placing on the Roman Index of his book Les Microzymas, which culminates in the acclama- tion of GOD as the Supreme Source. Béchamp's teachings are in direct opposition to materialistic views. But those priests had not the insight to see that the Creator is best demonstrated by the marvels of Creation, or appreciate the truth taught by Ananias, Azarias and Misael in calling upon the Lord to be praised through His Works!

Impatient of petty bickerings, like most men of large intellect, Béchamp found himself more and more at a dis- advantage in surroundings where he was misinterpreted and misunderstood. Neither were these his only worries. He was suffering from the jealousy he had inspired in Pasteur, and was smarting from the latter's public attack upon him at the International Medical Congress in London, which they had both attended in the year 1881. Such behaviour on the part of a compatriot before a foreign audience had seared the sensitive spirit of Béchamp and decided him to reply to Pasteur's plagiarisms. As he writes in the Preface to Les Microzymas 1 : — "The hour to speak has come!"

Another hour was soon to strike for him. After enduring for about eleven years the prejudices and persecutions of the Bishops and Rectors of Lille, he felt unable to continue to submit to the restraints placed upon his work. No cause of complaint could be upheld against him; the charge of materialism in his views could not be supported; but rather than have his life-work continually hampered, the Pro- fessor regretfully decided to send in his resignation, and his son Joseph, for his father's sake, felt impelled to do the same. Thus father and son, the shining lights of Lille's educational circle, found their official careers cut short and experienced that bitterness of spirit understood only by those whose chief lode-star has been their work.

The younger Béchamp during his stay at Lille had married a Mile. Josephine Lang from Havre, and, owing to this new connection, the Béchamp family moved to the seaboard town and set up in business as chemists. A scientific laboratory enabled the two strenuous workers to undertake medical analyses and continue their research.

But, again, the hand of Fate dealt heavily with Antoine Béchamp. His son Joseph, well known as a clever chemist, was constantly employed in making chemical assays, which work occasionally took him out to sea. On one of these expeditions he caught a severe chill: double pneumonia set in, and in a few days ended his com- paratively short and most promising life of forty-four years.

It was Antoine Béchamp's sad lot to outlive his wife and his four children. Quite against his wish, his younger daughter had been persuaded into taking the veil, and conventual severities brought about her death at an early age. His elder daughter had married at Montpellier in 1872, M. Edouard Gasser, who owned vineyards at Remigny, and left five children, one daughter and four sons, one of whom was at an early age carried off by typhus, while the other three lived to do service for France in the Great War.

Joseph Béchamp left six children, four daughters and two sons, one of whom died young. The other had no taste for science and disposed of his father's pharmacy and laboratory. He died a bachelor in 1915.

Antoine Béchamp's younger son, Donat, who died in 1902, married a Mile. Marguerite Delarue, and left three sons, the two younger of whom were destined to lay down their lives in the Great War. The eldest, then a doctor in the Russian Army, narrowly escaped death by drowning through the sinking of the hospital ship "Portugal" by a German submarine. Sole living male representative of his grandfather, he is said to inherit the same genius. Without the least effort, he has taken diplomas in medicine, chemistry and microscopy, and with the same facility has qualified in music and drawing, the arts being as easy to him as the sciences.

We will now return to Antoine Béchamp at the point where we left him at Havre, suddenly bereft of the gifted son on whom not only his family affections, but his scientific hopes were placed. Antoine Béchamp was indeed experiencing the rigorous discipline of which the Chinese philosopher, Mencius, thus speaks: — "When Heaven de- mands of a man a great work in this world, it makes his heart ache, his muscles weary, his stomach void and his mind disappointed; for these experiences expand his heart to love the whole world and strengthen his will to battle on where others fall by the way."

Havre had become a place of sorrowful memories, and Professor Béchamp was glad to move to Paris. Here he could continue his biological work in the laboratory of the Sorbonne, generously put at his disposal by his old col- league, M. Friedel, who, with another old friend, M. Fremy, had never ceased to deplore his patriotic unselfish- ness in abandoning his great work at Montpellier. Up to 1899, that is to say, until he was eighty-three years of age, this grand old man of science never ceased his daily labours in the laboratory. After that time, though no longer able to continue these, he worked no less diligently to within a few days of his death, collecting and arranging the literary results of his long years of toil, while he con- tinued to follow and criticise the course of modern science. Up to the very end his brilliant intellect was undimmed. Patriarchal in dignity, he was always ready to discuss old and new theories and explain his own scientific ideas. Though sorrow and disappointment had robbed him of his natural cheerfulness, he was in no sense embittered by the want of popular recognition. He felt that his work would stand the test of investigation, that gradually his teaching would be proved true and that the verdict of coming centuries could not fail to raise him to his proper place. Even more indifferent was he to the lack of riches. For him, labour was its own reward and success dependent upon the value of the results of work and not upon pecuniary profit, which as often as not falls to the share of , plagiarists, at the expense of men of real worth.

And so, in 1908, came the April day when, worn out by labour, Antoine Béchamp could no more rise from the bed in his room where, on the walls, four crucifixes testi- fied to self-sacrifice as the ladder by which mankind scales upwards. His belief was proved, to quote his own words, 1 in Him, "whom the founders of science, the greatest geniuses that are honoured by humanity from Moses to our own day, have named by the name — GOD!" "My faith!" was one of his last whispered utterances, as his life ebbed away, and of faith he was well qualified to speak, he who had delved so deeply into nature's marvels and the mys- teries of the invisible world! Calm and confident to the end, his trust was immovable. Well does the Moniteur Scientifique prophesy that time will do justice to his dis- coveries and that, the living actors once passed from the stage and impartial judgment brought into play, Béchamp's genius will be revealed to the world.

He taught that which was marvellous and complex, like all nature's workings, and public ignorance eagerly snatched instead at what was simple and crude. But error, having the canker of destruction within itself, falls to pieces by degrees. Already the need arises for a saner solution of disease than the mere onslaughts of venomous microbes and a fuller explanation of the processes of biological upbuilding and disruption, of life and death. And to whom could the world go better than, as we shall see, to the inspirer of what was correct in Pasteur's teach- ing, the true revealer of the mystery of fermentation, the exponent of the role of invisible organisms, the chemist, naturalist, biologist and physician, Professor Pierre Jacques Antoine Béchamp?

PART ONE THE MYSTERY OF FERMENTATION

CHAPTER II

A Babel of Theories

Before starting upon any examination of Béchamp's and Pasteur's contributions to the scientific problems of their age, it may be well to revert to the utter confusion of ideas then reigning in the scientific world in regard to the mysteries of life and death and the phenomenon of fermen- tation. The ensuing chapter can only hope to make clear the utter absence of clarity in regard to these leading questions; and though the work of earlier scientists in- variably led up to subsequent discovery, yet in the days when Antoine Béchamp and Louis Pasteur commenced their life-work, the understanding of the subject was, as we shall see, in a state of confusion worse confounded.

Three paramount problems then faced the scientific inquirer.

1. What is living matter, this protoplasm, so-called from Greek words meaning "first" and "formed"? Is it a < mere chemical compound?

2. How does it come into being? Can it arise spon- taneously; or is it always derived from pre-existing life?

3. What causes matter to undergo the change known as "fermentation"?

Among Professor Béchamp's prolific writings quite a history may be found of the confused babel of theories on these subjects.

To start with the first query: there was merely the vague explanation that protoplasm is the living matter from which all kinds of living beings are formed and to the properties of which all are ultimately referred. There was belief in a substance called albumen, best represented by white of egg, which was said to mix with certain mineral and other matters without changing its nature. J. B. Dumas demonstrated that such "albuminoids" com- prise not one specific thing, but many different bodies; but the contrary opinion prevailed, and for such substances "protoplasm" was adopted as a convenient term. It was "the physical basis of life," according to Huxley; but this hardly illumined the difficulty, for thus to pronounce protoplasm to be matter living per se, was not to explain the mystery of how it was so, or its origin and composition. True, Huxley further declared all living matter more or less to resemble albumen, or white of egg; but this latter was also not understood either by biologists or chemists. Charles Robin regarded it as being of the type of the mucoids, that is to say, as resembling mucus, which latter was so shrouded in mystery that Oken called it Urschleim (primordial slime), and the botanist, Hugo Mohl, identified it with protoplasm, thus dignifying mucus as the physical basis of all things living!

Claude Bernard tried to determine the relation of protoplasm to organisation and life and combated the general idea that every living body must be morpho- logically constituted, that is to say, have some structural formation. He argued that protoplasm gave the lie to this belief by its own structural indefiniteness. Charles Robin followed the same view and gave the name of "Blasteme" from a Greek word, meaning to sprout, to the supposed primordial source of living forms.

This was nothing but the old idea of living matter, whether called protoplasm or blasteme. A cell, a fibre, a tissue, any anatomical element was regarded as living simply because of its formation by this primordial sub- stance. Organisation was said to be its "most excellent modification." In short, formless matter was supposed to be the source of all organised living forms. In a kind of despair of any experimental demonstration of organisation and life, a name was invented for a hypothetical substance magically alive, although structurally deficient. Imagina- tion played more part in such a theory than deduction from tangible evidence. Thus we find that the physician, Bichat, who made a name for himself in science before he died in 1802, at the early age of 31, could not accept such an explanation and declared the living parts of a living being to be the organs formed of the tissues.

A great step was gained when Virchow thought he saw the cell in the process of being built up, that is, structured, and thus jumped to the conclusion that it is self-existent and the unit of life, from which proceed all organised forms of developed beings.

But here a difficulty arose, for the cell proved as transi- tory as any other anatomical element. Thus many scientists returned to the belief in primordial structureless matter, and opinion oscillated between the views held by cellularists and protoplasmists, as the opposing factions were designated. Utter confusion reigned among the conflicting theories which struggled to explain how a purely chemical compound, or mixture of such com- pounds, could be regarded as living, and all sorts of powers of modification and transformation were ascribed to it, with which we need not concern ourselves.

Instead, let us consider the second problem that faced Béchamp and Pasteur when they started work, namely, whether this mysterious living substance, which went by so many names, could arise independently, or whether pre- existmg^life is always responsible. It is hard to realise, nowadays, the heated controversy that raged in the past around this perplexing mystery. The opposing camps of thought were mainly divided into the followers of two eighteenth-century priests, Needham, who claimed that heat was sufficient to produce animalcule from putres- cible matter, and Spallanzani, who denied their appear- ance in hermetically sealed vessels. The first were named Sponteparists from their belief that organised life is in a constant state of emergence from chemical sources, while the second were named Panspermists from their theory of a general diffusion of germs of life, originally brought into being at some primeval epoch.

For the latter view, the teaching of Bonnet, following upon that of Buffon, was chiefly responsible; while Buffon's ideas are reminiscent of the ancient system ascribed to Anaxagoras. According to this last, the universe was be- lieved to be formed of various elements, as numerous as its different substances. Gold was supposed to be formed of particles of gold, a muscle, a bone, a heart, to be formed of particles of muscle, of bone, of heart. Buffon taught that a grain of sea-salt is a cube composed of an infinite number of other cubes, and that there can be no doubt that the primary constituent parts of this salt are also cubes, which are beyond the powers of our eyes and even of our imagination.

This was an experimental fact, says Béchamp, 1 and was the basis of the system of crystallography of Hauy.

Buffon argued in the same strain that "in like manner that we see a cube of sea-salt to be composed of other cubes, so we see that an elm is but a composite of other little elms."

Bonnet's ideas 2 were somewhat similar; the central theme of his teaching being the universal diffusion of living germs "capable of development only when they meet with suitable matrices or bodies of the same species fitted to hold them, to cherish them and make them sprout — it is the dissemination or panspermy that, in sowing germs on all sides, makes of the air, the water, the earth, and all solid bodies, vast and numerous magazines where Nature has deposited her chief riches." He maintained that "the prodigous smallness of the germs prevents them from being attacked by the causes that bring about the dissolution of the mixtures. They enter into the interior of plants and of animals, they even become component parts of them, and when these composites undergo the law of dissolution, they issue from them unchanged to float in the air, or in water, or to enter into other organised bodies."

Such was the imaginative teaching with which Bonnet combated the doctrine of spontaneous generation. When it came to practical experimental proof, one party pro- fessed to demonstrate the origin of living organisms from putrescible matter in sealed vessels; the other party denied any such possibility if air were rigorously excluded; while a pastry-cook, named Appert, put this latter belief to a very practical use and started to preserve fruits and other edibles by this method.

And here we are led to the third conundrum — What causes matter to undergo the change known as fermentation?

It is a puzzle that must have been brought home to many a housewife ignorant of scientific problems. Why should the milk left in the larder at night have turned sour by the morning? Such changes, including the putrefaction that takes place after the death of an organism, were so much of a mystery that the causes were considered occult for a long time. Newton had discoursed of the effect being due to an origin of the same order as catalysis — a process in which a substance, called a catalytic agent, assists in a chemical reaction but is itself unchanged. The myriads of minute organisms revealed, later on, by the microscope in fermenting and putrefying matters, were at first believed to be mere results of the general process of putrefaction and fermentation.

A new idea was introduced by Cagniard de Latour, who maintained that fermentation is an effect accompanying the growth of the ferment. That is to say, he looked upon the ferment as something living and organised, by which fermentation is rendered a vital act. It was the microscopic study of beer-yeast, undertaken about the year 1836, which brought him to the opinion that the oval cells he observed were really alive during the production of beer, decomposing sugar into carbonic acid and alcohol. Turpin, the botanist, interpreted this as meaning that the c globule of yeast decomposes sugar in the act of nourishing itself. J. B. Dumas maintained the necessity for nitro- genised albuminoid matter, as well as sugar, for food for yeast cells. Schwann, the German, went furthest of all by declaring that all fermentation is induced by living organisms and undertook experiments to prove these to be air-borne. But, in spite of other experiments confirming Schwann's work, for a time this teaching was set aside for the view that vegetable and animal matters are able to alter of themselves. For instance, the theory was held that by dissolving cane-sugar in water it changes of itself into grape-sugar, or glucose; or, using technical terms, cane- sugar undergoes inversion spontaneously. 1

Such, roughly speaking, were scientific ideas at the middle of the nineteenth century, when Antoine Béchamp and Louis Pasteur appeared on the scene with details of their respective experiments. As Pasteur is renowned as the first to have made clear the phenomenon of fermenta- tion, besides being appraised as the one who overthrew the theory of spontaneous generation, let us, instead of taking this on trust, turn to the old French scientific documents and see for ourselves what he had to say in the year 1857.

1 The usual product of this hydrolysis, or inversion of cane-sugar, is invert- sugar; but, as this was formerly described as grape-sugar, that expression is usually retained here.

CHAPTER III

Pasteur's Memoirs of 1857

Louis Pasteur, the son of a tanner, was born at Dole in the year 1822. Intense strength of will, acute worldly wisdom and unflagging ambition were the prominent traits of his character. He first came into notice in con- nection with crystallography by discovering that the crystalline forms of the tartrates are hemihedral. His son- in-law has recorded his jubilation over his early achieve- ment and has told us how he left his experiment to rush out of the laboratory, fall upon the neck of a Curator, whom he met accidentally, and then and there drag the aston- ished man into the Luxembourg garden to explain his discovery. 1

Work so well advertised did not fail to become a topic of conversation and eventually reached the ears of M^ Biot. On hearing of this, Pasteur wrote at once to ask for an interview with this well-known scientist, with whom he had no previous acquaintance, but upon whom he now showered every attention likely to be appreciated by the rather misanthropical old worker, whose influential patronage became undoubtedly the first contributory factor in the triumphal career of the ambitious young chemist. All the same, M. Biot's persuasions never suc- ceeded in gaining Pasteur a place in the Academy of Science. This he only obtained after the former's death, when nominated by the Mineralogical Section, and then oddly enough, exception began to be taken at once to his early conclusions on crystallography. 2

This, however, was not until the end of 1862. Mean- while, in 1 854, Pasteur was appointed Professor and Dean of the new Faculty of Science at Lille. In 1856, a request for advice from a local manufacturer of beetroot alcohol made him turn. his attention to the problem of fermenta- tion, which was then exercising the minds of the learned. His observations were interrupted by a journey to Paris to canvass for votes for his election to the Academy of Science. Obtaining only sixteen and completely failing in his attempt to enter the select circle of Academicians, Pasteur returned to Lille to his study of fermentations.

In spite of the work done by Cagniard de Latour, Schwann and others, the idea was prevalent that animal and vegetable matters are able to alter spontaneously, while the authority of the famous German chemist, Liebig, carried weight when he asserted that yeast induces fermentation by virtue of progressive alteration in water in contact with air. 1 Another German, named Luders- dorff, so we learn from B^champ, 2 had undertaken experi- ments to prove that yeast ferments sugar because it is living and organised. An account had been published in the Fourth Volume of the Traiti de Chimie Organique, which appeared in 1856.

Now let us examine Pasteur's contribution towards this subject the following year, since at that date popular teaching assigns to him a thorough explanation of fermentation.

During 1857 Pasteur left Lille to work at the ficole Normale in Paris; but we are not here concerned with his movements, but simply with what he had to reveal on the mysterious subject of fermentation.

His son-in-law tells us 3 that it was in August, 1857, that, after experimenting in particular with sour milk, Pasteur first made a Communication on "Lactic Fermentation" to the Scientific Society of Lille. Be this as it may, we find his extract from a Memoir on the subject in the Comptes Rendus of the French Academy of Science, Nov. 30, 1857. 4 The entire Memoir was printed in April, 1858, in the Annales de Chimie et de Physique 1 and from this latter we gain full details.

The experiment consisted in Pasteur taking the sub- stance developed in ordinary fermentation, nourished by sugar, chalk, casein or fibrin, and gluten (an organic matter occurring in cereals) and placing it in yeast broth (a complex solution of albuminoid and mineral matters), in which he had dissolved some sugar and added some chalk.

There was nothing new in the procedure, so Béchamp points out 2 ; it was only the same experiment that Liebig had undertaken some sixteen or seventeen years previously. Unlike Liebig, he did not ignore microscopic examination and so made observations that had been missed by the German chemist. Thus Pasteur is able to tell us that a lactic ferment is obtained, which, under the microscope, has the appearance of little globules, which he named "lactic-yeast," no doubt fromT their resemblance to yeast, although in this case the little globules are much smaller, i In short, he saw the minute organism known today to be the cause of lactic-acid fermentation.

Now let us go on to his remarkable explanation of the phenomenon. He tells us that it is not necessary to intro- duce the lactic ferment in order to prepare it, as "z7 takes birth spontaneously as easily as beer-yeast every time that the conditions are favourable." 3 This assertion surely demon- strates Pasteur's belief in the spontaneous generation both of beer-yeast and of that which he called "lactic-yeast." It remains to be seen what "the favourable conditions" are, according to his teaching. He tells us before long. "These globules of lactic-yeast take birth spontaneously in the body of the albuminoid liquid furnished by the soluble part of the (beer) yeast." 4 There is certainly nothing in this to overthrow the general belief in spontaneous genera- tion. But, in fairness, we must not overlook a note that he added to the full edition of his Memoir, as we find it in the Annates de Chimie et de Physique. 1 Before this account ap- peared in April, 1858, Professor Béchamp, as we shall find, had provided the French Academy of Science with an illuminating explanation of the origin of ferments. In face of Béchamp's irrefutable views, Pasteur may have thought it only wise to add a proviso to a Memoir that from start to finish has no solution whatever to offer as to the appearance of moulds except a spontaneous origin. Therefore, by the sentence "it (lactic-yeast) takes birth spontaneously as easily as beer-yeast," we see a star and looking below find a foot-note, in which he says he uses the word "spontaneously" as "the expression of a fact," but reserves the question of spontaneous generation. 2 Certainly any denial of it is completely excluded from this Memoir with its assertion of the spontaneous appearance of beer-yeast and "lactic-yeast." Where Pasteur differed from other Sponteparists was in omitting to attempt any explanation of such a marvel.

His followers, ignoring the confusion of his views, have seized upon the concluding statement in this same memoir as a triumphant vindication of the correctness of his teach- ing, since he said: — "Fermentation shows itself to be cor- relative of life, of the organisation of globules, not of the death and putrefaction of these globules, still more that it does not appear as a phenomenon of contact." 3 But this was only what others had said and had gone some way to prove years before him. So devoid was he of proof that he had to make the following admission in regard to his hypothesis that "the new yeast is organised, that it is a living being," namely:— "If anyone tells me that in these conclusions I am going beyond facts, I reply that this is true, in the sense that I frankly associate myself with an order of ideas 1 that, to speak correctly, cannot be irrefutably demonstrated.' '

We have, therefore, in Pasteur's own words, his con- fession of non-comprehension of a problem that the rigid experiments of another worker, Professor Béchamp, had already, as we shall shortly see, solved by an irrefutable demonstration. The reason why Pasteur should get the credit for demonstrating that which he owned he could not demonstrate is as much of a puzzle to the lover of historical accuracy as was the phenomenon of fermentation to Pasteur.

However, let us not deny ourselves a thorough examina- tion of his work, and now consider his Memoir upon Alcoholic Fermentation, of which his son-in-law, M. Vallery-Radot, tells us 2 that Pasteur said "The results of these labours (on lactic and alcoholic fermentation) should be put on the same lines, for they explain and complete each other."

We find the author's extract from this latter Memoir among the Reports of the French Academy of Science of the 21st. Dec, 1857. 3

Pasteur's procedure in this experiment was as follows: — He took two equal quantities of fresh yeast, washed in water. One was left to ferment with pure sugared water, and after having extracted from the other all its soluble part by boiling it with plenty of water and filtering it to get rid of the globules, he added to the limpid liquor as much sugar as he used in the first fermentation and then a trace of fresh yeast.

He expressed his conclusions as follows: "I am just establishing that in beer-yeast it is not the globules that play the principal part, but the conversion into globules of their soluble part; because I prove that one can suppress the globules that are formed and the total effect on the sugar remains sensibly the same. Thus, certainly, it matters little if one suppresses them by means of filtration with the separation of their soluble part, or if one kills them by a temperature of 100c° and leaves them mixed with this soluble part." 1

In view of the fact that he was supposed to be reasoning on the hypothesis that yeast is organised and living, there was so much that was extraordinary in this that he pauses to reply to inevitable criticism.

"But how, it will be asked, can the fermentation of sugar take place when yeast is used that is heated to ioo°, if it is due to the organisation of the soluble part of the globules and these have been paralysed by a temperature of ioo°? Fermentation then takes place as it does in a natural sugared liquid, juice of the grape, of sugar-cane, etc., that is to say, spontaneously. . . ."

Here is seen the prevalent idea of spontaneous alteration, though Pasteur goes on to state that "in all cases, even those most liable in appearance to drive us from belief in the influence of organisation in the phenomena of fermenta- tion, the chemical act that characterises them is always correlative to a formation of globules."

His final conclusions are held up for admiration: "The splitting of sugar into alcohol and carbonic acid is an act correlative of a vital phenomenon, of an organisation of globules, an organisation in which sugar plays a direct part by furnishing a portion of the elements of the sub- stance of these globules." But far from understanding this process, we find that Pasteur owns three years later, in i860: "Now in what does this chemical act of decomposi- tion, of the alteration of sugar consist? What is its cause? I confess that I am entirely ignorant of it."

In any case, the critical mind inquires at once — How can fermentation be explained as a vital act by the operation of a dead organism ; or by the conversion into globules of its soluble part, whatever that may mean; or by spon- taneous alteration? No wonder that Béchamp com- ments 1 : "Pasteur's experiments were so haphazard that he, who acknowledged with Cagniard de Latour the fact of the organisation and life of yeast, boiled this living being to study its soluble part!" Indeed, Béchamp's account of Liebig's and Pasteur's closely allied work is well worth perusal from p. 56 to p. 65 of Les Grands Problemes Medicaux.

The chief point to be noted is that as Pasteur made use for these experiments of substances with life in them, such as yeast broth, etc., they could not, in any case, furnish evidence as to the foremost question at stake, namely, whether life could ever arise in a purely chemical medium. That problem was never so much as touched upon by Pasteur in 1857. If we had only his explanation of fermentation, made during that year, we should indeed ^ave a strange idea of the phenomenon. We should believe in the spontaneous generation of alcoholic, lactic and other ferments. We should be puzzled to understand how fer- mentation could be a vital act and yet be effected by dead organisms. Of the air-borne origin of ferments we should not have an inkling, that is, so far as Pasteur was con- cerned, for, either, he was ignorant of, or else, he ignored the truth already propounded by others, particularly by Schwann, the German. Pasteur passed over with slight allusion the contacts with air that" were involved in his experiments, because his aim was to disprove Liebig's theory that the alteration of yeast broth was due to an oxidation by air and he seems to have had no idea of the important part that air might play, although for a very different reason from the one imagined by Liebig.

Clearly, in 1857, Pasteur was a Sponteparist, without, however, shedding light upon the controversy. The house- wife, puzzled by the souring of milk, could only have learned from him that living globules had put in a spontaneous appearance, which explanation had held good many years earlier to account for the maggots found in bad meat, until it had occurred to the Italian, Francesco Redi, to keep flies from contact.

Here the reader may interpolate that Pasteur's vision, although still obscured, was gradually piercing the fogs of the mystery. But, as it happened, those fogs were by this time dispersed: a "beacon experiment" was shedding light on the difficulty. In 1855 and in 1857 there had been presented to the French' Academy of Science Memoirs that were to prove the lode-star of future science, and it seems high time that now, more than half a century after- wards, credit should be given where credit is due in regard to them. And here let us turn to the outcome of work undertaken in a quiet laboratory by one who, perhaps un- fortunately for the world, was no adept in the art of adver- tisement and was too much immersed in his discoveries to be at that time concerned about his proprietary right to them. Let us again open the old French documents and see for ourselves what Professor Antoine Béchamp had to say on the subject of the vexed question of fermentation.