Page 125 - Ethel D. Hume - Bešam ili Paster: Izgubljeno poglavlje u istoriji biologije

BfiCHAMP OR PASTEUR?
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first built up, but from which they are afterwards freed
by that disruption we call death. The two Professors of
Montpellier, working together, began to trace and follow
life in its marvellous processes.
At the risk of being wearisome by repetition, we must
remind ourselves of the order in which Bechamp achieved
his early discoveries. First, he demonstrated that the
atmosphere is filled with minute living organisms,
capable of causing fermentation in any suitable medium
which they chance to light upon, and that the chemical
change in the medium is effected by a ferment engendered
by them, which ferment may well be compared to the
gastric juice of the stomach. Secondly, he found in ordin-
ary chalk, and afterwards in limestone, minute organisms
capable of producing fermentative changes, and showed
these to bear relation to the infinitesimal granulations he
had observed in the cells and tissues of plants and animals.
He proved these granulations, which he named micro-
zymas, to have independent individuality and life, and
claimed that they are the antecedents of cells, the up-
builders ofbodily forms, the real anatomical, incorruptible
elements. Thirdly, he set forth that the organisms in the
air, the so-called atmospheric germs, are simply either
microzymas, or their evolutionary forms set free by dis-
ruption from their former vegetable or animal habitat,
and that the "little bodies" in the limestone and chalk are
the survivors of the living forms of past ages. Fourthly, he
claimed that, at this present time, microzymas constantly
develop into the low type of living organisms that go by
the name of bacteria.
We have already superficially studied the rigid experi-
ments that established Bechamp's views on the fermenta-
tive role of air-borne organisms and of those found in
chalk; let us now follow a very few of the innumerable
experiments he carried out in the establishment of his
other conclusions. His work was so incessant, his observa-
tions so prolific, that only their fringe can be touched and
no attempt can be made to trace the exact chronological