Page 124 - Ethel D. Hume - Bešam ili Paster: Izgubljeno poglavlje u istoriji biologije

LABORATORY EXPERIMENTS 121

and waited for facts to make answer. Working with Pro-
fessor Estor, observations showed that not only are the
molecular granulations, the microzymas, anatomical ele-
ments, autonomously living, with organization and life
inseparably united in their minute selves, but that it is due
to these myriad lives that cells and tissues are constituted
living; in fact that all organisms, whether the one-celled
amoeba, in its pristine simplicity, or man, in his varied
complexity, are associations of these minute living entities.
A modern text-book well sums up Bechamp's primary
1
—
teaching: "Their behaviour" (that of the molecular
granulations, here named microsomes) "is in some cases
such as to have led to the hypothesis long since suggested
by Henle (1841) and at a later period developed by
Bechamp and Estor and especially by Altmann, that
microsomes are actually units or bioblasts, capable of
assimilation, growth and division, and hence to be re-
garded as elementary units of structure, standing between
the cell and the ultimate molecules of living matter."
Only some such discovery could clear away the con-
fusion on the subject of spontaneous generation. Super-
ficial observers, among whom we are forced to include
Pasteur, continued to maintain that fermentation was
only induced by germs from the air; but at the same time
Pasteur had to admit that meat, protected from atmos-
pheric contact, in an experiment of his own, none the less,
became tainted. Other experimenters insisted upon
changes taking place for which atmospheric organisms
could not be held responsible.
Bechamp, the first to make clear the fermentative role of
airborne agents, was now able, according to his own
views, to explain that fermentation might take place
apart from these, for all organisms teem with minute living
entities capable of producing ferments, and that, in fact,
those found in the air he believed to be simply the same
released from plant and animal forms, which they have
1
The Cell in Development and Inheritance, by Edmund B. Wilson, Ph.D.,
p. 290.