Page 114 - Ethel D. Hume - Bešam ili Paster: Izgubljeno poglavlje u istoriji biologije
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DISEASES OF      S I L K - W O R M S    1 1  1 —

      first  .  .  ."  But, no doubt, realising that the Academy
      Reports were destitute of any such proof, he demanded
      the insertion of the full text of a Note that he claimed to
      have sent on the ist June, 1868, to the Agricultural Society
      of Alais.  It was duly inserted with Pasteur's letter, and
      was entitled: "Note on the Silk-Worm Disease commonly
      known as Morts-Blanes or Moris-Flats."
        The perusal of these Communications by Pasteur brings
      home the marvel that he was able to impose upon  the
      world the idea that he had elucidated the diseases of silk-
      worms. Just as he had been astray in regard to pebrine, so,
      even now after all the time he had been at work, he had
      nothing valuable to impart about flacherie. He referred to
      the organisms associated with the disease, without any
      allusion to the fact that M. Joly of the Faculty of Science of
      Toulouse, as well as Professor Bechamp, had observed
      them long before him. He thought there was nothing to
      show that these organisms caused the complaint, but that
      they were the result of digestive trouble. "The intestine,"
      he wrote, "no longer functioning for some unknown
      reason, the materials it encloses are situated as though in-
      side an immovable vessel."
        Bechamp, naturally, felt obliged to answer Pasteur; and
      so, among the Reports ofthe French Academy of Science,  1
      on the 13th July, 1868, we find a Note from the Professor
      "On the Microzymian Disease of Silk-Worms, in Regard
      to a Recent Communication from M. Pasteur."     Here
      Bechamp refers to his previous pamphlet, published on
      the nth April, 1867, in which he and M. Le Ricque de
      Monchy had drawn attention to the organisms associated
      with morts-flats. He refers to his past Communication of
      the  1 3th May, published among the Academy Reports of
      the 20th May, and also to his Note of the 10th June, 1867.
      He shows how again on the 28th March, 1868, he pub-
      lished a second edition of his pamphlet, to which he added
      further opinions on the microzymian complaint, other-
      wise flacherie. He also draws attention to the fact that as
        1
         Comptes Rendus 67, p. 102.
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