Page 128 - Ethel D. Hume - Bešam ili Paster: Izgubljeno poglavlje u istoriji biologije

LABORATORY EXPERIMENTS 125

month ofJune, 1875, had to be transported to Lille at the
end of August, 1876, and was terminated there in August,
1882.
Owing to the temperate climate of Lille, very different
from that of Montpellier, which, for a great part of the
year, is almost sub-tropical, the destruction of the body
was much less advanced in this later experiment than it
had been in the previous one. All the same, in the beds of
carbonate of lime near the remains, in one case, of the
whole kitten, and, in the other, of the viscera, microzymas
swarmed and there were also well-formed bacteria.
Moreover, the chalk was impregnated with organic matter,
which coloured it a yellowish brown, but the whole was
odourless.
From these two experiments, Bechamp found great con-
firmation of views that had been already suggested to him
by many other observations. To begin with, they sup-
ported his belief that the "little bodies," the microzymas,
of natural chalk are the living remains of the plant and
animal forms of which in past ages they were the con-
structive cellular elements. It was shown that, after the
death of an organ, its cells disappear, but in their place
remain myriads of molecular granulations, otherwise
microzymas. Here was remarkable proof of the imperish-
ability of these builders of living forms. Neither is the fact
of their own independent life denied by a longevity under
conditions that would debar them from nutrition through-
out immense periods, since we find prolonged abstention
from food to be possible even in the animal world among
hibernating creatures, while the naturalist can detail
many more cases among minute organisms, for instance,
pond-dwellers, which fast for indefinite intervals when
deprived of water, their natural habitat, and fern-spores,
which also are known to retain a vitality that may lie
dormant for many years. Thus, whether confined within
some animal or vegetable body, or freed by the disruption
of plant and animal forms, the microzymas, according to
Bechamp, were proved capable of preserving vitality in a