Folks, I leave you with the last chapter of “The Blood and Its Third Element” by Antoine Béchamp which I think is an important part that laypeople like you and I need to know and hopefully understand something about “our precious Blood” Microzymas and Its Pleomorphism ! :-)
Please, for the sake of all humanity, educate yourself, folks!
As always the last word is yours, folks!
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/qw2ztts7vv37m/Bechamp
https://www.mediafire.com/file/fvvvghytatjmsw1/Spanish_Flu_Roseneau_Experiments_1918.pdf/file
https://www.mediafire.com/file/qbvbix692vy7a26/Bechamp_or_Pasteur_Douglas_Hume.pdf/file
https://www.mediafire.com/file/juhbykanzzeham9/The_Blood_and_its_Third_Element.pdf/file
https://www.mediafire.com/file/kvyy0lomu4lhdjp/The_Invisible_Rainbow_AHistoryofElectricityandLife.pdf/file
must remove it, through consideration of the action of the amygdalic microzymas and that of those of beer yeast, which further proves that differences of the same kind are presented by the microzymas of the different plant tissues.
The microzymas of the vascular system differ from the microzymas of the other anatomical systems with regard to their power of decomposing oxygenated water. This is also to be seen from the above mentioned observations of Thénard when correctly interpreted. These differences are seen to be still greater when we study comparatively the physiological functional aptitudes of the various anatomical systems in man and other animals.
For instance, while the pancreatic and gastric glands of the dog and of ruminants are endowed with like functional properties in digestion, this is not the case with the salivary and parotid glands of man and those of dogs or horses. The salivary and parotidian microzymas of man powerfully liquify and saccharify the starch of fecula; the same microzymas of the dog or horse liquify only slowly and do not at all saccharify the same starch. Thus the zymas secreted by the microzymas of the same gland in man and in other animals is essentially different. Morphologically identical, these microzymas are functionally different, and I am certain that the more these are studied the more reasons will be found for differentiating the microzymas of the microzymian molecular granulations of the blood of the various species of animals and those of their globules, as I have differentiated the haematic microzymian molecular granulations.
And the microzymian theory of the living organization explains why this should be; it is because the microzymas of each species are autonomous in it and are, ah ovo, what they should be in order that each species should propagate itself, develop itself, preserve itself, and after death, thanks to oxygen, that each individual should undergo that total destruction which reduces all substances except the microzymas to the mineral condition.
If they were not anatomically autonomous, why should they differ and be functionally various in species and in their anatomical systems? I have answered this question in the past, and have been met by only bald denials. It is now worthwhile to introduce new considerations to convince those whom the assertions of Cornil and Nencki might yet lead astray.
Chapter 8
The microzymas and bacteriology. Ovular end vitellin microzymas. Microbes and molecular granulations. Geological microzymas. Biological characteristics ofmicvozymas. Micro mcs end their perennity. Microbes and pathology. Phagocytosis. Micro mcs ‹nd ‹nthrax. Microbes and disease. Micro mns and microbes. Micro mcs end the individual coefficient. Micro mns, like end death. Micro mns and health. Micro mcs, blood end protoplasm.
Conclusions.
TO PLACE beyond dispute the autonomy of the microzymas, it is first necessary to consider the facts and observations which prove that the existence of the microzymas as living beings has not been suspected by those naturalists who have studied the infusoria, nor yet by the anatomists who have studied the cellules and tissues.
Demonstration that the microz mas re livi__q l2g_Jj2gs., beloneine to a cateeorv of their own. and havine no analogue. Let us first get rid of the hypotheses that the microzymas are either the bacterium temio, the monos crepusculum, the micrococcus, or the spores of bacteria.
It is to be borne in mind that I gave the name of microzyma at first to the geological figured ferment of the chalk of Sens and other calcareous earth, and that I have discovered this ferment in other calcareous rocks, always of a spherical form, very brilliant, exhibiting brownian movement and smaller in size than all the vibrioniens described by authors.
Ehrenberg described (in the chalk) the remains of fossil microscopic organisms called polythalamies and noutilites, but makes no mention of either monas cvepusculum or bacterium punctum. In fact, none of the microzymas can be confused with those described by Ehrenberg under those names. The microzymas are even smaller than the bacterium temio, the smallest of the known infusoria, the first term of the animal kingdom, according to Felix Dujardin.
Nevertheless, the microzymas had been seen in cloudy infusions of vegetable and animal matters, but they were thought to be “the active molecules of Robert Brown”, i.e. they were thought to be molecules having staggered or scintillating movement without changing their place, in other words “brownian movement,” and no further attention was paid to them.
In fact, the microzymas are neither the bacterium punctum, nor the monos crepiisculum, nor even the bacterium termo, which is much smaller than they. It will be sufficient to establish this fact by referring to the description of these monas, given by Dujardin in his Historie Naturelle des Zoophytes, pp.215 and 279.
On the other hand, if these bacteria, these monads, these micrococci, belong to determined species, it is contrary to the evidence of natural history to regard them as capable of being transformed into other genera and species of vibrioniens, as we see the microzymas produce them by evolution.
The suggestion that the microzymas are the spores of schizomycetes is also untenable for the following reasons:
A spore is an egg, if according to the old view, the bacteria are animals, and search has been made for the eggs of bacteria; or it is a grain, if according to the new creed the bacteria are vegetable. But egg or grain, a spore cannot multiply itself as the microzyma does, and cannot therfore be the same thing.
Take for example the microzymas of the ovule in the Graafian vesicle in the fowl, and the microzymas of the vitellus of the mature egg. In the ovule there are ovular microzymas, and in the vitellus, vitelline microzymas. At a given moment there are, say, a milligram of microzymas in the ovule, and there are two or three grams dried at 100°C (I have isolated and weighed them) in the vitellus, l They have then multiplied prodigiously during the development of the vitellus.2
So much, then, for the anatomical analysis of the egg of the fowl. Chemical analysis shows that the elementary composition of the ovular microzymas is not the same as that of the vitellin, the former, as will be seen, being less carbonized. Evidently, their composition changed in the process of multiplication.’
Chemical analysis has further demonstrated that the vitellin microzymas of several species of birds differ from those of the fowl in their composition and especially in the properties of their respective zymases.4 This accords exactly with the microzymian theory, for it is evident that the microzymas are what they should be, so that the egg can produce the bird, its tissues, and all that pertains to its future being. It has been demonstrated that during the development of the being, parallel with the anatomical development by the multiplication of the microzymas, there is a functional development of these, so that in each anatomical system they become that which they successively are in the embryo, in the foetus, and the adult.
If the hypothesis that the microzymas are the spores of bacteria were true, it would be necessary that there should first have existed in the circumambient atmosphere as many species of these spores as there are species of animal and vegetable ovules; next it would be necessary for these spores to penetrate as far as, and into, the ovule, and they would there have to multiply so as to fill up the vitellus of the egg of the fowl.
I need go no further, for there are still otherwise enormous difficulties, when we take into consideration the microzymas of the developed being, which are so different from the embryonal and foetal microzymas! But it now lies with the opponents of the microzymian theory to demonstrate the existence of these spores and their penetration as far as, and into, the ovules, and their multiplication.
We have thus discarded the hypothesis opposed to that of autonomy. It is also discarded by the following consideration.
Shortly before Pasteur’s admission in 1886 of the presence of the microzymas in the altered blood of his experiment, he had, for the purpose of denying them, asserted that the microzymas were the molecular granulations “which we all know.” This was to his confreres at the Academy.
Histologists and pathologists knew of microzymas and represented them by a stippling in their diagrams of tissues. But their name even betrayed their opinion that they were neither organized nor living; in effect, the qualification of ‘molecular’ was intended to indicate that it meant only small collections of some sort of matter; thus they were described as white, gray, minerals, fats, albuminoids, etc. They were even described as posessing the brownian movement; nevertheless, before the discovery of the microzymas, no one thought of connecting them either with the bacterium punctum or the monas crepusculum. They were connected with anatomical organisms as being the remains of tissues, or destroyed cellules, or as amorpyuous matter; no one dreamed of making them come from outside. No consideration of the anatomical molecular granulations had anything to do with the discovery of the microzymas, except, as I have shown above, purely chemical considerations.
No, the molecular granulations are not the microzymas. And from the time of our first note, Estor and I have stated that the microzymas exist only among the anatomical objects which in histology are called molecular granulations. We held the microzymas to be autonomous anatomical elements. A more careful anatomical analysis enabled me to demonstrate that there exist naked microzymas and microzymas in the condition which I have termed microzymian molecular granulations.
Thus is disproved another gratuitous and erroneous assertion!
I return now to the microzymas. I had described them from the beginning as being chemically and physiologically figured ferments, producers of zymas, which are called soluble ferments, and were placed in the same category as the figured ferments which are insoluble. Biologically, I distinguished them as being able to become vibrionien by evolution, a fact which we have seen to be verified in every sense. But in the experiments on spontaneous alterations, or fermentations, wherein microzymas become bacteria, we have seen that these were destroyed and that vibrioniens more and more minute appeared in their place, so that at last there remained only of these bacteria the forms nearest to the microzymas. In the same manner that by their destruction the cellules set their microzymas free, the bacteria in their complete destruction reproduce microzymas similar to those of the chalk, and we will now see how that is.
In the experiments on the spontaneous alterations of natural animal matters, the substances which in a chemical sense are termed organic and which result from transformations by fermentation under the influence of the microzymas, both before and after their vibrionian evolution, and with or without the setting free of gas, are never entirely destroyed. In other words, they are not reduced to a mineral condition, e.g. carbonic acid, water, nitrogen, etc. For such destruction, oxygen is necessary, under conditions which reproduce those realized in geological epochs.
When I had discovered the microzymas in the chalk and other calcareous rock, and became convinced that they were not dependent on atmospheric germs, I asked myself if they were not the living remains of organized beings which had disappeared in geologic times.5 This hypothesis was verified in the following manner:
A kitten was killed and buried between two beds of pure carbonate of lime and left in a cylindrical glass vessel, covered with a small quantity of paper so that the air had free access to it, but dust was excluded.
It was left in this state for seven years, at the end of which every part of the body, except some fragments of bone, had disappeared. The carbonate of lime was perfectly white, so complete had been the destruction. Under the microscope, nothing was to be seen in the upper layers of the carbonate except microscopic crystals of aragonite of this carbonate; but in the beds adjacent to the place, and underneath, where the kitten had been, there were crowds of glittering motile microzymas, such as are to be seen in the chalk of Sens.
And with this kind of artificial calcareous rock, containing the microzymas of an animal of the present day, I was able to repeat the experiments on fermentation which I had made with the chalk of Sens and with other calcareous rocks, both lacustrine and marine.6
Such was the first experimental verification of the hypothesis that the microzymas of the chalk and calcareous rocks are the organized remains, still living, of beings which lived in the geological ages of the earths to which those rocks belonged.
I have said that the microzymas of the artificial chalk were the microzymas of an animal of the present epoch, but this needs some modification in terms to be quite accurate.
There were the microzymas of the bacteria which the normal microzymas of the animal had first become by evolution. By fresh experiments I have learned that the microzymas of an entire body, or of the liver, the heart, the lungs or the kidneys, become bacteria in the first phases of the phenomenon; these then disappear, becoming again microzymas, while the rest of the matter already transformed is, under their influence, and with the access of air, reduced to the mineral state, i.e. carbonic acid, water, nitrogen, etc.7 And I have demonstrated that whereas in the climate of Montpellier seven years were required to accomplish this, a much longer time would be needed in a colder climate, so that in a climate such as that of the Obi valley, centuries would be required.
It was then a legitimate conclusion that the microzymas of calcareous rocks, clays, and marls, in short, of all the rocks which contain them, are the organized and living remains of animals and plants of past geological epochs. These beings were histologically constituted, as are the beings of our epoch, so that when they died, their microzymas became bacteria by evolution, and the microzymas, geological ferments, of these rocks, are those of these bacteria destroyed in their turn and reduced to their microzymas.
It is not surprising then, that having long pursued the anticipated consequences of the hypothesis now verified, I have demonstrated the presence of the microzymas in the earths of Herault and Gard, in cultivated lands generally, in moor lands, alluvials, in water, in the dust of the streets, where they are to be found in crowds—often still in the condition of bacteria, proving that like those of the calcareous rocks, they are energetic ferments. And already, prior to 1867, I had made known their role in the soil in agriculture.
These researches led to a result of very great importance; it was the demonstration that what were and still are called germs of the air are essentially nothing other than the microzymas of beings which have lived, but have disappeared or are being destroyed before our eyes. In fact, by precise experiments, I have proved that the microzymas of the air are ferments of the same order as those of the chalk and rocks, and also those of my experiments with artificial chalk; only, varying with the places, the circumambient air may, along with these microzymas, contain conides of lichens, spores of mushrooms, bacteria and everything else that the wind can disperse.'
There is then no panspermy such as that which Charles Bonnet had invented, nor that which Spallanzani and Pasteur (after me) had proposed. In short, there are no pre-existing germs. There exist in the surrounding air only the microzymas of former beings which have disappeared and are disappearing with the things which the wind scatters.
Let us reflect firstly that the species of microzymas are as numerous as the species of eggs, seeds, and spores of the various species of animals and plants, and secondly that there are, in each animal and vegetable organism, already developed or in process of development, microzymas as numerous as there are anatomical systems and organs, tissues and special cellules in these organisms.
It is then easy for us to understand that the species of atmospheric microzymas are present in enormous numbers. One can also understand the very great number of changes which these microzymas may cause when they enter a fermentescible medium in which they can multiply, and either evolve in it or build in it cellules or a mould.
If then, as I have demonstrated experimentally, there are besides microzymas, in both animals and plants, and among the micro-organisms of the circumambient air, spores, conides of fungi, of lichens, even actual cellules of ferments,’ it is easy to understand that if these micro-organisms fall into fermentescible media they will develop in it, each according to its nature, and that various productions, moulds, diverse cellules, and at the same time vibrioniens, may appear in it.10
But in all the observations and experiments relative to the spontaneous change of natural vegetable and animal matters, and in the fermentations of sugar or fecula in the tissues and humors of animals, when the influence of the micro-organisms of the air has been destroyed or suppressed,11 only microzymas and vibrioniens, and vibrios or bacteria, fruits of their evolution, are seen; this proves that the microzymas are autonomous anatomical elements existing in it of themselves.
These statements and considerations may be summed up in the following propositions:
1) The microzymas of the animal organism proceed from the vitellin microzymas, which are autonomous anatomical elements in the vitellus.
2) The number of anatomical species of microzymas is enormous.
3) The essential biological characteristic of the microzymas is that they are creators of cellules by synthesis and of vibrioniens by evolution.
4) The physiological and chemical characteristic of microzymas is to produce the zymases and to be themselves ferments having a determined form.
These propositions are also true for plants beginning with the ovule; but from the fact that a microzyma may become a vibrionien by evolution, it necessarily follows that the species of microzymas being innumerable, the species of vibrioniens are likewise innumerable.
It is important to remember that an anatomical element microzyma is animal in an animal, and vegetable in a vegetable. Hence arises this question: to what kingdom does the bacterium of a given animal microzyma belong? Or a given vegetable microzyma?
We must remember that any microzyma, before it accomplishes the evolution which produces a bacterium, passes through the evolutionary phases of microzyma slightly changed in form, of microzymas successively associated in twos, in threes, in several grains, etc.
But those forms have been described under the names of monos, bacterium termo and punctum, coccus, diplococcus, tomlo, streptococcus, micvo-coccus, mesococcus, microbe with a point, microbe with a double point, etc. Nor is that all; bacteria in spontaneously destroying themselves to become microzymas similar to those of the rock-chalk or of the artificial chalk of my experiments, have passed through new forms, of which the most constant is that which has also been described as the bacterium term g12
But what are such specifications worth, being based only upon the shape, the length and thickness, the color, and the motility or immotility of the object specified? In the order of received ideas it would be too tedious to discuss them; it suffices for me to say that Dujardin, who knew the germ theory and did not allude to it in his explanations, was of the opinion that the phenomena observed in these changes were favorable to the doctrine of spontaneous generation; and consequently that outside of the microzymian theory it is all incomprehensible and arbitrary. A priori, one cannot tell to what kingdom a bacterium belongs, for one can only distinguish a microzyma, and consequently a bacterium, by the origin and function of the microzyma.
An example will make this clear. Take the parotid gland of a man, and that of a horse, the structure and functions of which seem to be the same and of which the microzymas of the cellules are morphologically identical. While the parotidian microzymas of man liquify and energetically saccharify the starch of fecula, those of the horse liquify that starch but do not saccharify it. And we have established by other differences of the like kind that the microzymas of the different anatomical systems of a single organism may differ one from the other; and by still greater reason those of different organisms may differ.
Plants, like animals, being anatomically determined as living by their respective microzymas, the bacteria which these microzymas can become are evidently limited to the two kingdoms; and so perhaps the question of whether a vibrionien is an animal, as was thought, or a plant, as is now asserted, is an idle one.
But if one chooses in spite of all this to insist that the bacteria are plants and that the microzymas are their spores, a new question would arise: which of the species of schizomycetes which the same microzymas may become before becoming a perfect bacterium (bacterium temio, monos crepusculum, torula, diplococcus, streptococcus, micrococcus, etc.)—is it first the spore, in the organism before evolution, and then in the chalk-rock or in the artificial chalk, after the total destruction of the organism?
According to accepted notions, the reply cannot be otherwise than uncertain! According to the microzymian theory, however, here is the answer:
A microzyma in a plant or an animal whose conditions of existence have just changed can become a bacterium by evolution, and the intermediate evolutionary phases, like those of the tadpole, which becomes a frog, leaves the special nature of the microzyma still existing; there are not new species. The perfect bacterium depends on the nature of the microzyma, as the perfect batrachian depends on the particular nature of its tadpole.
Every bacterium resolves itself by spontaneous destruction into a microzyma, and the microzymas thus evolved are different from the anatomical microzyma which has become a bacterium, not morphologically, nor functionally with regard to being a figured ferment, but by a collection of properties, which assure the perennity of the form and the function in a condition of individual separateness.
But the chief difference is this: the microzyma in the vitellus is the organized commencment of all animal organization, and in the ovule of the plant it is the commencement of all plant organization. On the other hand, the microzyma resulting from the destruction of a bacterium is the organized end of all organization.
And here is something stupendous! The geological microzymas, as well as those of the artificial chalk in my experiment, are organized and living, not only because without change of form, they are individually figured ferments, but also because under certain conditions, such as those of the fibrin in the experiment described in the first chapter, they act as ferments at the same time that they can again become bacteria by evolution.
The microzymas not only possess the sort of perennity of which I spoke; they enjoy also the stupendous duration of the geological epochs from the time the microzymian rocks have been formed down to the present time. This duration means that the microzymas are physiologically imperishable. And this last statement must convince us that the microzymas are organized living beings, of a class apart, and without analogue.
The following is the experimental proof that this new principle of anatomy and physiology is well founded.
The vitellin microzymas of the egg of the fowl do not pre-exist in the ovule; they are the result of a substantial development, and of the proliferation of the ovular microzymas.
To prove this, it will be sufficient to make an elementary analysis of the microzymas of the vitellus of the fowl’s egg, and of those of the ovules remaining in the Graafian vesicle, while these ovules are only a few millimetres in diameter. The following are these analyses:
The difference of two percent of carbon in the percentage composition answers to great differences in the nature of the proximate principles of these microzymas. I will add that the vitellin microzymas contain much more mineral matter than the ovular. It is thus evident that the microzymas of the ovule become vitellin microzymas by substantial development, while they multiply and the vitellus grows. In short, one may say that the ovular microzymas become vitellin microzymas by maturing.
It would take too long to dwell as long as might be desirable on this result and upon the whole of the chemical, physiological and anatomical phenomena which this ripening necessitates in order that the vitellin microzymas should become fitted to play their part, chemical, physiological and histogenic, during the embryonic development. I must refer the student to what I have said elsewhere.14
What is most important to bear in mind is that no matter how high one goes in the scale of living beings, the microzymas are found in the ovule, and that these microzymas are not those which are to be found in the vitellus, but will become them.
All the special facts which I have made known, including the last, allow me to construct a general principle from the experimental findings; that the microzyma, the final term of anatomical analysis, is in truth the simple anatomical element which satisfies the conception of Bichat and completely destroys the idea of living matter not morphologically defined.
The cellularists, it is but fair to recall, regarding the cellule as the simplest anatomical element, believed that it proceeded necessarily from a former cellule, omnis cellula e cellula, holding it to be the vital unit, living per se, and regarded an entire organism as the sum of these units. But we now know that that was a deduction from incomplete and superficial observations, for the cellule, a transitory anatomical element, has the microzymas for its anatomical element. It is this which alone possesses all the characteristics of an anatomical element, living per se, and which must be regarded as the unit of life. It is what I have already stated in the following terms:
“The microzyma is at the beginning and at the end of every living organization. It is the fundamental anatomical element whereby the cellules, the tissues, the organs—the whole organism—can be defined as living.”
Let us devote a few words to develop this idea. Let us penetrate a little further into this notion of a fundamental anatomical element, which, as has been said, implies that the microzyma is the living atom of the organization as the physical atom is the element of the molecule of a simple body.
This would be true if the microzyma were unchangable in its simplicity. But in reality it is essentially mutable, as are all living bodies; and it is especially so, in order that it may fulfil its numerous functions. In fact, the microzymas, functionally different in the different anatomical systems of the same species, and different at all ages, beginning with the embryonal stage, have been primitively those of the vitellus, after having been those of the ovule.
Always anatomically simple, the microzyma becomes, by nutrition, that which it needs to become, so as to accommodate itself to each new condition of existence which the successive phases of the development of each anatomical system provide for it. It is thus that even in the embryo, in that which will be the ovary, a category of microzymas becomes again ovular microzymas to recommence the same cycle. I add that, taken as a whole and in its details, the theory has been confirmed, verified and corroborated by a great number of other facts of general anatomy, pathological anatomy and physiology.15
When by the attentive study of these facts one has become convinced that the microzymian theory is their pure and simple expression, it will be at once recognized that the cellule is already an organ in which, by nutrition, the conditions of the preservation of the microzymas with the constancy and regularity of their chemical and physiological functions are unceasingly realized. And it will thus be understood that the microzymas, whether of certain cellules, the vitellus, or the blood, also realize after their manner the conditions of this constancy and regularity. When these conditions are no longer realized, they may undergo vibrionian evolution.
The most prominent fact in the history of the microzymas, and that which has been the most disputed precisely because of their capacity to undergo vibrionian evolution, is the fact of their anatomical autonomy. Now this faculty, which is only manifested when the normal conditions of existence of the microzymas are no longer present, is the best proof which could be given of the change which has happened in their condition, causing their irregular and changed functioning.
In fact, in their various anatomical situations, the microzymas remain morphologically true to themselves. They function in each cellule, organ, and anatomical system, naturally, chemically and physiologically for themselves, while preserving their individuality. At the same time, by coordination, they function for the benefit of the microzymian molecular granulations of the cellules, the organs and the various anatomical systems taken altogether, whose physiological condition of health is preserved by them.
But when for some reason changes occur in an organ, changes such as auscultation or percussion, Cros tells us that there can arise a discoordination, a functional perturbation in the entire organism, and disease. It is worth mentioning that from the time Dr. Cros became acquainted with the microzymian theory, he did not hesitate to recognize the microzymas as the anatomical agents of the discoordination; but how does it happen?
Among the causes which produce disease, a sudden chill in summer is the one most frequently indicated or invoked. The chill is at the same time an influence and a lowering of temperature. I do not insist on the fact that it is only something living which is painfully affected, so as to confine myself to the physical phenomenon. But the microzymas are very sensitive to variations of temperature; so much so that even the geological microzymas act regularly only at temperatures near 40° to 42°C (-104° to 107°F); in fact, the microzymas of the chalk of Sens do not cause fecula to ferment at temperatures below 38°C (-100.4°F).
Further, a very slight lowering of the temperature is sufficient for the egg which should produce a bird not to produce one, or to putrefy or produce the monsters of Dareste when heat is not uniformly applied. In fact, the influences of the medium which modify the activity of the microzymas are various. That which happens to the isolated microzyma happens also to those of the egg and those of the organism. Suppress the air and the egg does not become a fowl, but instead undergoes another kind of change.
If for any reason whatever the air does not have sufficient access to the pulmonary alveolae, and their epithelium becomes the pulmonary tubercle, the cellules become reduced to their microzymas, which are then found in vibrionian evolution in the tubercle in the cratious state. If the discoordination resulting from an irregular functioning of a part of an anatomical system is sufficient to bring on a malaise which is not removed, there will arise a diseased condition because of a sharp change in the conditions of existence of the microzymian anatomical elements, and the change in the medium sufficient to cause the discoordination will manifest itself in the vibrionian and bacterian evolution of the microzymas of the relevant part of the system.
It is thus that in the disease called send de rote (anthrax), so thoroughly studied by Davaine, the diseased microzymas end by evolving into what that learned physician called b‹icteridioe, the blood gobules undergoing the changes which are so characteristic. The bacteridiae were not the cause of the diseased condition, but were one of its effects; proceeding from the morbid microzymas, they were capable of inducing this diseased condition in the animal whose microzymas were in a condition to receive it. Hence it is seen that the alteration of natural animal matters is spontaneous, and justifies the old aphorism so concisely expressed by Pidoux: Diseases ‹me born omits end in us.
On the other hand, the disregard of this law of nature, the firm establishment of which is accomplished in this present work, necessarily led Pasteur to deny the truth of the aphorism, and to imagine a pathogenic panspermy, as he had before conceived, o priori, that there was a panspermy of fermentation. That Pasteur, after having been a sponteparist, should reach such a conclusion was natural enough; he was neither physiologist nor physician, but only a chemist without any knowledge of comparative science.
What is astonishing is that he should have succeeded in procuring the acceptance of his ideas among physicians and in academies, and to procure the rejection of the microzymian theory. For instance, an enlightened physician thus summed up the fundamental proposition of Pasteur:
“The microbes always come from without; they constitute species which recount from generation to generation up to the origin of the world.16
An eminent surgeon, Verneuil, ended by proposing as a demonstrated theorem that there is no spontaneous tetanus, that there is no spontaneous small pox, syphilis, glanders, hydrophobia, tuberculosis, charbon or malignant pustule; declaring that the pathogenic problem consisted solely in discovering how and when the microbe, also called a virus, came from outside the body and penetrated into the organism; declaring that the question is thus stated between old medicine and the microbian medicine “with extreme simplicity and without the least ambiguity. 17
But these assertions of Surgeon Verneuil are reduced to nothing when we call to mind that the pretended germs of the air are only the microzymas of organisms which have disappeared, the microzymas having become bacteria by evolution; and that even at the Academy of Medicine I said—and no one ventured to contradict me—that no one had ever been able to reproduce a disease on the nosological roll by taking the pretended pathogenic microbe in normal air, but only in the diseased animal. And I add that just as with time the fibrinous microzymas lose the property of decomposing oxygenated water, so also after a short time the blood of an animal which has died of anthrax no longer communicates that diseased condition, and the same is true in all cases.
Thus normnl nir not only does not, but cnnnot, contain the pretended pathogenic microbes, and the very principle o/ microbian medicine constiWtes a Jndnmentnl error.
But no attention was paid to this. Abandoning the famous dogma of the closure of the body to germs from without, it was held that “the human organism carries constantly a large number of microbes of many different species” which only await the moment when “the organism being disturbed in its physiological functioning will be given over to the activity of its own microbes; whose presence it had theretofore borne without being affected.” Jaccond wrote this nonsense with reference to cases of acute pneumonia following a chill.1'
In Pasteur’s set, Jaccond’s opinion was accepted; and although their master had declared that cellules were not living, his disciples imagined that the leukocytes (under the name of phagocytes) were living, like amoeba, and able to perform movements called amaeboid. And it was imagined that these phagocytes formed themselves into troops to pursue and devour the microbes. There was thus a phngocytosis1, 9 which was trumpeted forth as providential.
A precise knowledge of the blood reduces to its just value this latest form of the struggle against the microzymian theory. Of all the suppositions and fancies of Pasteur, there remains only, even for his disciples, only a sole cause, the germs or microbes of the air, to explain the phenomena of fermentations and disease.
Nevertheless not all physicians thought as did Verneuil or Jaccond. Before 1866, while the triumph of the microbian doctrine was in full swing, Dr Tripier did not accept that there was a microbe come from without to be considered. His attention had been drawn to the new opinions by considering how frequently in the classical books of medicine a sudden chill led to everything. Here is the masterly way in which he explained it:
“It is not at the time when the consideration of the individual coeffiecient tends to take a larger and larger place in nosological speculations that we must return to a simple etiology which has been rightly questioned. I am far from pretending that the savants to whom we are indebted for such interesting researches in the direction of specific causes design to bring everything within it, but those who do not exhibit that much prudence must be reminded that to constitute a morbid state, the concurrence of many conditions are indispensable, and that however specific it may be, a single cause is no cause at all.”
It was thus that Tripier placed in parallel etiology according to both ancient medicine and microbian medicine. I will state later the profound meaning of the expression, drawn from a1gebra ,20 of “individual coefficient.”
Let us say, at first, that it has been supposed that maladies resulting from specific causes are poisonings by living matters capable of reproducing themselves in the organism. The mechanism of these poisonings, says Tripier, “has been explained in many ways without being permitted to reject one on account of another.”
“According to Pasteur,” he said, “the multiplication of microbes would be the consequence of the introduction of germs introduced from without. For Bechamp the microbe2l might proceed from a special mode of evolution of living molecular granulations which he named microzymas, granulations which exist in all protoplasm, the vicious evolution whereof might be regarded as causes independent of the introduction of leaven of foreign origin.”
The radical difference between the principle of microbian medicine and that of the microzymian theory of disease is thus clearly expressed. The microzymas are not the cause of disease, but by their defective or morbid functional evolution under the various influences which I have described, their evolution may become vibrionian. It was only through the ambiguity that Pasteur succeeded in creating that Tripier was able to say that I had believed that the microbe proceeded from the microzymas, and that later Jaccond thought that the microzymas are the special microbes of the human organism. 22
To appreciate the antinomy between the microbian system and the microzymian theory, and to give to this work its practical utility by showing that the microzymian theory explains what the microbian system is powerless to make clear, it will be sufficient to recall the two fundamental facts upon which rest the fabric of the demonstration that the blood is a flowing tissue, and like all tissues, is spontaneously alterable.
The first is that a mixture of proximate principles, under the specified conditions, is naturally unalterable; but on contact with common air the same mixture always changes, owing to the various ferments which develop in it from the germs carried in this air. This mixture then does not alter spontaneously.
The second is that a natural animal matter, tissue or humor, withdrawn from a living animal in perfect health and under the same conditions, inevitably alters, even when absolutely protected from the air and its germs. Natural animal matter, then, is spontaneously alterable.
It is also desirable to recall, firstly, that the differences in the nature of the two orders of substances is such that in the alteration of the former, the micro-organisms consist of several categories of different species; while in the alteration of the latter only one category is to be found, i.e. the microzymas, and afterwards, most frequently, the vibrioniens, products of their evolution.
Secondly, corroborating the facts, creosote in adequate quantity hinders the alteration of the former in contact with a limited volume of air, preventing the appearance of ferments, while the same quantity does not hinder the alteration of the latter, nor in suitable cases, the vibrionian evolution of the microzymas.
Of these two facts Pasteur has only regarded the first and has denied the second, and it is because he and those who have trusted his word have looked upon the animal body only as organs constituted of a mixture of immediate principles -protoplasm— where nothing exists capable of becoming a vibrionien, that they have thought that the microbe coming from without is the sole cause of the alteration of this mixture and of disease.
Now if the organism was what they think, and the sole cause of disease was what they say, i.e. a mixture of immediate principles necessarily altering on exposure to the air, everyone would, of equal necessity, become diseased; but even in times of epidemics the majority are not attacked! An explanation of this fact has been sought in the microbe itself and in other considerations of the like order; but they are all worthless, for if the air contains that which changes the mixture, it does not contain that which causes disease. The old medicine explained immunity from disease by the receptivity or predisposition to the disease which those who are not attacked do not possess. Tripier, more precisely, invokes the individual coefficient. But a mixture of proximate principles which when exposed to the air is always ready to be altered enjoys no immunity!
In exact language one can speak only of the receptivity of the individual coefficient, of that which is regarded as a living body. But what is a living body? What is life?
Life, say some, is a special force, manifesting itself in ponderable matter. Mayer denies this. However it may be, they, the former, speak of a physical theory of life. We have seen that according to Pasteur, life is that which elaborates the proximate principles, the natural substances of which the organism is composed.
Bichat said: “Life is the totality of the functions which resist death.” But what is life? What is death? And what is the individual coefficient in the microzymian theory? For there is no longer any question of protoplasm!
Bichat said that life was a property of tissue because he regarded elementary tissues as the living elements of organized beings, which, in his view, possessed in themselves a permanent principle of reaction which enabled them to resist the causes of destruction which surround them. The microzymian theory verifies the conception of Bichat even on this point; in fact:
The microzyma is the fundamental anatomical element, autonomically living, proliferating, while remaining morphologically similar to itself. It is in reality an apparatus whose functions manifest themselves in a medium which supplies the necessary conditions for its existence, by chemical reactions which cause it to produce the special zymases depending upon its special nature and the various proximate principles of the place and the medium in which it functions in the organism. Isolated from the organism in new conditions, as in the case of fibrin, there are some which act like lactic ferment with regard to fecula.
In short, the microzymas resist so well the ordinary causes of destruction that, in the calcareous and other rocks, geological microzymas are to be found, still living, which functioned as anatomical elements in the animals of the epoch of those rocks. Here then we have the organized being, living per se, physiologically imperishable, unsuspected until I described it. It is in the microzyma alone, functioning as an anatomical element, that there resides the permanent principle of reaction which enables the organisms, of which it composes the cellules, tissues, and organs, to preserve themselves by nutrition and resist the athmotelluric (Tripier) conditions which unceasingly tend to destroy them.
There is no anatomical element simpler than the microzyma, and none other like it in its resistance to total destruction. If we call life the totality of the anatomical properties which allow microzymas to construct of cellules by synthesis, and which also makes makes them capable of becoming bacteria or vibrios by evolution; and if we also define life as the aggregate of the physiological and chemical energies which enable the microzymas to produce the zymases and to nourish themselves by transforming for their own use the materials of the medium in the anatomical systems in which they function, eliminating at the same time that which they disassimilate after having used it—then it must surely be admitted that LIFE is in microzymas allied to matter, but to the matter in the structured orynnizntion, morphologically defined, and not simply to ponderable matter.
We now know that the microzymas are functionally different in the various anatomical systems of the same animal, and that they may be functionally different also in the same organs of the same structure in man and animals. It therefore results that it is not always permissible in experimenting to draw conclusions from one animal to another, and least of all to man. So that if we could admit with Bichat that life is a property of tissue, this property is not the same in all the tissues of the same structure and in the microzymas.
I will endeavour to explain my opinion of the reason that one kind of zymas is produced by one microzyma and another kind by another microzyma.
If there is the life of a microzyma, the life of a cellule and that of the organs of an anatomical system, there is also the life of the organized whole. This necessarily results from the coordinated entirety of the particular lives of the organs and thence of the individual lives of the microzymas which function in them. It is this view of the functions which Bichat called the entirety of the functions which resist death.
But if the microzyma is physiologically imperishable, what is the death of the living individual being? It is the opposite of that which constitutes its life, i.e. it is the absolute discoordination of the functions of its microzymas.
It is thus that in a part abstracted from a living animal, i.e. muscle or blood, etc, nothing is dead; but the microzymas, the only things antonomically living, being in a state of discoordination, are no longer in their normal condition of existence. They now function only for themselves, determining the changes which attend the disorganizations of the tissues and the destruction of the cellules.
Now what is the meaning of the expression, “individual coefficient,” introduced into medical language by Tripier? Just as in algebra a quantity is said to be a function of another upon which it depends, so in the microzymian theory it may be said that an organism or a cellule are quantities which are functions of the microzymas which compose it and upon which it depends. Thus the expression of coeffiecient applied to the number which multiplies these quantities can be readily understood.
The individual coefficient is the factor which increases or diminishes in the microzymas the sum of the energy which enables them to resist the various causes which, by disturbing their functioning, determine morbidity in them, and thence disease and death.
The factor, whatever it may be, being the same, and the variable, i.e. the microzymas, differing, the results will necessarily vary. Now it is a proven fact that the microzymas are functionally different between species, between races, and even in the individual, according to sex and age, and in the different anatomical systems. The individual coefficient, then, is relative to the functional differences of the microzymas of the individual.
The state of perfect health results from the constancy and regularity of the coordinated functioning of the organs within which the microzymas are healthy. But even in a state of coordination, it is necessary to take into account heredity, diatheses and atavism, which may in some way have affected the microzymas of a particular individual.
The individual coefficient, then, is a complex constant, dependent upon the particular coefficients of the relevant functional systems of the individual.
To return to the blood; here is a typical example which justifies the above considerations.
I said that in anthrax the bacteridia, instead of being the specific cause of the disease, were actually the result of the evolution of the microzymas of the blood, having become morbid as the consequence of a discoordination or of some disturbance in the physiological functioning of the organism. But it is evident that if the interior medium were inert or passive, this discoordination, in such a mixture of proximate principles, would be an effect without a cause, nothing leading it to become disturbed in its supposed functioning (for such a mixture has been shown to be unalterable of itself), while on the contrary it would immediately and infallibly be placed in a condition of alteration determined by the agent, microbe, or specific ferment introduced from outside the organism.
In short, on the hypothesis of a pure interior medium, a mixture of proximate principles, and a microbe whose multiplication is poisonous, all sheep would be equally susceptible, especially in times of epidemic, to contract anthrax under identical circumstances, by contagion, and in all cases by inoculation.
Well, this does not happen. The adult African sheep is refractory to anthrax; it does not contract the disease by contagion, and generally not even by inoculation. The individual coefficients of French and African sheep are not the same under identical circumstances. And as proof that the coefficient differs according to age, it is enough to state that the African lamb is not refractory, while the adult sheep of the same race is. Let us then say that the microzymas in the blood of the African adult sheep are among those which, even when ill treated, do not undergo that vicious alteration which causes them to become carbuncular; with the lambs of the same race it is otherwise.
If the internal medium were the mixture imagined by microbian medicine, the foregoing facts would be incapable of explanation. For the medium would be inert and passive; since it has been proved that such a mixture is always disposed to allow the multiplication of microzymas or of another like specific ferment able to alter it for its (the ferment’s) own nourishment, and that the medium without the ferment would be unalterable under other ordinary athmotelluric influences, cold, etc. It is the individual coefficient in relation to the functional differences of the microzymas of the subjects which alone explains the immunity of some, and the susceptibility of others, since it has been demonstrated that in the interior medium there is nothing autonomically living, acting and physiologically impressionable except the microzymas.
In the language of the old medicine, immunity and susceptability are determined by the capacity of the living organism to resist the influence of external or internal agents. The microzymian theory adopts this thoroughly physiological language since it is only the microzymas of the living organism which can receive impressions and either suffer or not suffer their influence, or in other words resist or not resist the perturbing causes of their functioning depending on whether the individual coefficient is abnormal or normal.
But what proof have we of this resistance, and of the mechanism of the harmlessness of the microzymas from without? The following is one such proof.
The isolated microzyma of beer yeast performs the function of a lactic ferment, producing little alcohol. In its function of an anatomic element in the globule of beer yeast, it never produces lactic acid. The young yeast, vigorous, acting strongly on cane sugar, even in contact with the air and with the addition of the chalk whose microzymas always effect lactic fermentation, still does not produce lactic acid; it resists, and microzymas of the chalk when added also fail to produce it. But if the beer yeast is old, or in some respect a1tered,23 and even protected from the air, it will produce lactic acid, and the quantity will be greater if calcareous rock or even pure carbonate of lime is added.
Here we have the immunity of the beer yeast organism and its acquired susceptability—the immunity which enabled it to resist the influence of the microzymas of the air and the chalk, annihilating their influence; and the susceptability which enabled these microzymas to produce lactic acid without hindering those of the chalk in performing their work. Here we have a picture of the immunity and susceptability of the microzymas of the cellules and tissues of the internal medium of an animal organism.24
In microbian medicine, the language of the old medicine is without meaning, since the former states that one sole cause produces disease and the alteration by fermentation of organic matter in general, making no distinction between the internal medium and a mixture of proximate principles.
The insuperable contradiction which exists between the microbian doctrines and the microzymian theory of the living organization brings into strong relief the truth of the aphorism of Tripier. A single cause of disease and the alteration or fermentation of proximate principles, however specific it may be, is no cause at all.
Yes, “the sole cause” is no cause, for I have demonstrated beyond dispute that there do not exist (I do not say terms; the word is now unsuitable) pre-existing microzymas, pathogenic or not; but there do exist microzymas, the living remains of bacteria derived by evolution from the anatomical microzymas of organisms which have disappeared or are disappearing before our eyes.
I limit here these considerations, referring the reader to my earlier publications, which this present work completes and corrobop rates 25
And now I hope it will be confessed that the error, common to all contemporary experimenters who have sought to discover the cause of the phenomenon of the spontaneous coagulation of the blood, and also the cause of other equally spontaneous alterations, or who, like Pasteur, maintain the natural inalterability of the blood and of all natural organic matters, is that they have regarded protoplasm as a mixture of pure proximate principles, and have held as dogma that this mixture is living and organized, although not morphologically constituted. At last I hope that it will be recognized that the discovery of the microzymas verifies the time honored conception of Bichat, according to which only that which is structured and morphologically determinate in any organism is living.
It is the agreement of the microzymian theory with the conception of Bichat which gives to the theory of the blood as a flowing tissue and to the physiological and anatomical theory of its coagulation and other spontaneous alterations their highest degree of certainty.
By way of conclusion, the following is a summary of the fundamental facts, the discovery of which has led to an understanding of the true anatomical and chemical constitution of the blood and to the explanation of its spontaneous alterations.
1) Ordinary air, near the earth, contains living microscopic objects called germs, and these germs are essentially microzymas.
2) Proximate principles, and any mixture of such principles, are unalterable in the presence of water, or of a limited volume of air at ordinary temperature when a little creosote has been first added; and such proximate principles under such conditions do not permit any organized beings to appear.
3) Natural organic matters, vegetable or animal, tissues and humors, under like experimental conditions, always change of themselves, by a phenomenon of fermentation, and at the same time the microzymas give birth to vibrioniens by evolution.
4) The fibrin of the blood is not a proximate principle; it is a false membrane containing microzymas, wherof the intermicrozymian gangue is a specialized albuminoid substance.
5) It is owing to its microzymas that fibrin decomposes oxygenated water, that it liquifies starch of amidon and that it can be dissolved, undergoing chemical change, in very dilute hydrochloric acid.
6) The microzymas of fibrin in liquified starch undergo vibrionian evolution notwithstanding the presence of creosote.
7) Fibrin liquifies spontaneously in carbolized water without the microzymas undergoing vibrionian evolution.
8) The fibrinous microzymas are special; they can produce lactic and butyric fermentation in liquified starch.
9) Natural albuminoid matters are mixtures, reducible by direct analysis into exactly defined proximate princeples.
10) The albuminoid matters reduced to proximate principles are very complex modules composed of less complex ones, amides, and their derivatives of the fatty and aromatic series. There exist of such less complex molecules, constituting an albuminoid molecule, quaternaries like urea; quinaries like taurine, which is sulphuretted, and hematosine, which is ferruginous; casein, in addition to the sulphuretted molecule, contains one which is phosphuretted; it has then six elements.
11) There are several fibrins constituted as are those of the blood.
12) There are a great number of different specific albumens which coagulation does not differentiate.
13) The zymas are special albuminoid matters, likewise definable as proximate principles; they are always a functional product of the microzymas.
14) The yellow liquid of the blood, besides its albumen, contains haemozymas.
15) The haemoglobin of the red corpuscle, reduced to a definite proximate principle, decomposes oxygenated water by its noncomplex feruginous molecule, haematosine, and becomes colorless.
16) The red corpuscle of the blood is a true cellule, having a cell wall and its proper content. This content is constituted especially of haemoglobin and microzymian molecular granulations, the microzymas of which decompose oxygenated water as do those of the fibrin.
17) The blood contains a third anatomical element; the haematic microzymian molecular granulations. It is the albuminoid atmosphere of these granulations which form, by allotropic transformation, the intermicrozymian gangue of the false membrane called fibrin.
18) The blood, a flowing tissue, is the content, while the vessels, arteries, veins and their appendages are the container.
19) The three orders of anatomical elements of the blood only find their conditions of existence complete in their natural surroundings.
20) After issuing from the vessels, these conditions of existence are no longer fulfilled, and the alteration of the blood commences.
21) The microzymas of the different parts of the circulatory system possess alike the property of decomposing oxygenated water without this property being unique to them, for the microzymas of almonds, other parts of plants, and beer yeast also possess this property. But there are animal tissues whose microzymas do not disengage the oxygen of oxygenated water.
22) The microzymas, anatomical elements, are living beings of a special order without analogue.
23) The spontaneous changes of natural animal matters, whether the microzymas have or have not undergone vibrionian evolution, thanks to free access of air, lead always under certain conditions to the complete destruction by oxidation of the product of those changes; that is to say, they are reduced to the mineral condition, carbonic acid, water, nitrogen. But the microzymas under whose influence the oxidation is effected are not attacked. After all which is purely proximate principle in a tissue, a cellule or the bacterium has undergone total destruction, the microzymas remain, and bear testimony to the existence of the vanished organization.
24) The geological microzymas of certain calcerous rocks and chalk, and those of the dust of the streets and the air, bear testmony to the microzymas which functioned as anatomical elements in the tissues of organisms of past geological epochs, even as they function in those of the present time.
25) That which in the air have been called germs are essentially the microzymas resulting from the total destruction of a living organism.
26) Normal air contains neither pre-existing germs nor the things which have been improperly termed microbes, supposed to be produced by parents resembling them.
27) The air normally contains no pathogenic microzymas. The carbon bacteridium of Davaine is the product of the evolution of diseased microzymas, either of haematic microzymian molecular granulations, or those of the blood globules.
28) There is no living matter which is not morphologically defined; that which has been called protoplasm in the cellule always contains microzymas as anatomical elements.
END
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