Page 129 - Ethel D. Hume - Bešam ili Paster: Izgubljeno poglavlje u istoriji biologije

126 BfiCHAMP OR PASTEUR?
dormant state, even though the period surpassed men's
records. It would still be possible for different microzymas
to possess varying degrees of vitality, for, as we shall see,
Bechamp found differences between the microzymas of
various species and organs.
But, over and above finding that the elements ofthe cells
can live on indefinitely after the disruption of the plant or
animal bodies that they originally built up, he considered
that he had obtained convincing evidence of their
capability of developing into the low types of life known as
bacteria. If not, where did these come from in the case of
the buried viscera? Even if air-borne germs were not
completely excluded in the case of the kitten's body, the
utmost precautions had been taken to exclude them in the
case of the burial of the inner organs. Yet Bechamp found
that the microzymas of the viscera, as well as those of the
whole kitten had evolved into associated microzymas,
chaplets of microzymas, and finally into fine bacteria,
among which the bacterium capitatum appeared in the
centre of a great piece of flesh.
Here Bechamp saw how wrong, first, the great natural-
ist, Guvier, and, after him, Pasteur, had been in assuming
"That any part whatever, being separated from the mass
of an animal, is by that fact transferred into the order of
dead substances and is thereby essentially changed." By
Bechamp's researches it was seen that separate parts of a
body maintain some degree of independent life, a belief
held by certain modern experimenters, who, however,
unlike Bechamp, fail to provide an explanation.
His experiment showed the Professor how it is that
bacteria may be found in earth where corpses have been
buried and also in manured lands and among surroundings
of decaying vegetation. According to him, bacteria are
not specially created organisms, mysteriously appearing
in the atmosphere, but they are the evolutionary forms of
microzymas, which build up the cells of plants and
animals. After the death of these latter, the bacteria, by
their nutritive processes, bring about the disruption, or in