Page 130 - Ethel D. Hume - Bešam ili Paster: Izgubljeno poglavlje u istoriji biologije

LABORATORY EXPERIMENTS 127

other words, the decomposition of the plant or animal,
resulting in a return to forms approximating to micro-
zymas. Thus Bechamp taught that every living being has
arisen from the microzyma, and also that "every living
being is reducible to the microzyma." 1 This second
axiom of his, he says, accounts for the disappearance of
bacteria in the earlier experiment, for, just as microzymas
may evolve into bacteria, so, according to his teaching,
bacteria, by an inverse process, may be reduced to the
pristine simplicity of the microzyma. Bechamp believed
this to have happened in the earlier case, when the
destruction of the kitten's carcass was so much more
complete than in the second case, when the temperate
climate of Lille had prolonged the process of decom-
position.
Many, indeed, were the lessons the indefatigable worker
learned from these two series of observations. 2
1. "That the microzymas are the only non-transitory
elements of the organism, which persist after the death of the
latter and form bacteria.
2. "That there is produced in the organisms of all living
beings, including man, in some part and at a given moment,
alcohol, acetic acid and other compounds that are normal
products of the activity of organised ferments, and that there
is no other natural cause of this production than the normal
microzymas of the organism. The presence of alcohol, of acetic
acid, etc., in the tissues, reveals one of the causes, independent
of the phenomenon of oxidation, of the disappearance of
sugar in the organism and of the disappearance of the gluco-
genic matters and that which Dumas called the respiratory
foods.
3. "That, without the concurrence of any outside influence
except a suitable temperature, fermentation will go on in a
part withdrawn from an animal, such as the egg, milk, liver,
muscle, urine, or, in the case of plants, in a germinating seed,
or in a fruit which ripens when detached from the tree, etc.
The fermentable matter that disappears earliest in an organ
after death is the glucose, glucogenic matter or some other of
the compounds called carbo-hydrate, that is to say, a respirat-
1
Les Microzymas, p. 925.
3
ibid. pp. 628-630.