Page 104 - Ethel D. Hume - Bešam ili Paster: Izgubljeno poglavlje u istoriji biologije

DISEASES OF S I L K - W O R M S —
iot
verdict, Agricultural Societies waited to hear the pro-
nouncement of the official representative. Plenty of
patience had to be exercised.
M. Pasteur arrived on his mission at Alais in June, 1865,
having, as he stated before long in his Note to the Academy
of Science, 1 "no serious title" to his fresh employment,
owing to his ignorance of the subject. "I have never even
touched a silk-worm," he had written previously to M.
Dumas, and the perusal of an essay on the history of the
worm by Quatrefages comprised his study up to June,
1865.
Yet, as some statement was expected from him, he
managed to address a Communication to the Academy of
Science on the 25th September of the same year in which
2
he gave vent to the following extraordinary description :
"The corpuscles are neither animal nor vegetable, but
bodies more or less analogous to cancerous cells or those of
pulmonary tuberculosis. From the point of view of a
methodic classification, they should rather be ranged
beside globules of pus, or globules of blood, or, better still,
granules of starch than beside infusoria or moulds. They
do not appear to me to be free, as many authors think, in
the body of the animal, but well contained in the cells.
... It is the chrysalide, rather than the worm, that one
should try to submit to proper remedies."
One may well imagine that such a description evoked
3—
ridicule from Professor Bechamp, who scornfully wrote.
"Thus this chemist, who is occupying himself with fer-
mentation, has not begun to decide whether or no he is
dealing with a ferment."
What Pasteur had done, however, was to give a detailed
description that was wrong in every particular. There for
a considerable time he left the matter, while the deaths of
his father and two of his daughters intervened, and he
received the honour of being invited as a guest to spend
1
CampUs Rendus 61, p. 506.
2
C. R. 61, p. 506.
3
Les Grands Problemes Midicaux, par A. Bechamp, p. 7.