Page 126 - Ethel D. Hume - Bešam ili Paster: Izgubljeno poglavlje u istoriji biologije

LABORATORY EXPERIMENTS 123

order ofthe experiments upon which he based his opinions.
At a very early stage of his researches, he demonstrated
with Professor Estor that air need have nothing to do with
the appearance of bacteria in the substance of tissues.
Further, these investigators established the independent
vitality of the microzymas of certain tissues, certain
glands, and so forth, by showing that these minute
granules act like organised ferments and that they can
develop into bacteria, passing through certain inter-
mediary stages, which they described, and which inter-
mediate stages have been regarded by many authorities
as different species.
We have seen that the basic solution of the whole secret
for Bechamp was his discovery of the "little bodies" in
chalk, which possess the power of inverting cane-sugar,
liquefying starch, and otherwise proving themselves agents
of fermentation. The strata in which he found them were
regarded by geologists as having an antiquity of at least
eleven million years, and Bechamp questioned whether
the "little bodies" he had named microzyma crette could
really be the surviving remains of the fauna and flora of
such long-past ages. Not having centuries at his disposal to
test the problem, he determined to see for himself what
would remain now at this present time of a body buried
with strict precautions. He knew that, in the ordinary way,
an interred corpse was soon reduced to dust, unless em-
balmed, or subjected to a very low temperature, in which
cases the check to decomposition would be explained by
the inherent granules, the microzymas, becoming dor-
mant.
x At the beginning of the year 1 868, he therefore took
the carcass of a kitten and laid it in a bed of pure carbonate
of lime, specially prepared and creosoted, while a much
thicker layer covered the body. The whole was placed in a
glass jar, the open top of which was closed by several
sheets of paper placed in such a way that air would be
continually renewed without permitting the intrusion of
1
See Les Microzymas , par A. Bichamp, p. 625 and onwards.