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LABORATORY EXPERIMENTS 131

can do so. Thus a new road is opened: when the micro-
scope becomes powerless to show us among known forms
the cause of the transformation of organic matter, the
piercing glance of the chemist, armed with the physio-
logical theory of fermentations, will discover behind the
chemical phenomena the cause that produces them."
—
Again he said: "The microzymas can only be distin-
guished by their function, which may vary even for the
same gland and for the same tissue with the age of the
animal." 1
He also showed that they vary for each tissue and for
each animal, and that the microzymas found in human
blood differ from those found in the blood of animals.
These researches were arousing so much attention that,
in 1868, Professor Bechamp was invited by M. Glenard,
the Director, to give a special lecture at the School of
Medicine at Lyons. On this occasion, the great Master
discussed the experiments upon the microzymas of the
liver, which he and Professor Estor had conducted to-
gether, as well as the role that the microscopic organisms
of the mouth play in the formation of salivary diastase and
in the digestion of starches, which work he had under-
taken in connection with Professor Estor and M. Sainte-
Pierre. He also pointed out the microzymas in vaccine
and in syphilitic pus.
These were the days in which Bechamp was happy in
his work at Montpellier, when the star of hope still
gleamed, and he displayed the bright cheerfulness
habitual to his temperament. We can picture him, with
his noble face and large idealistic eyes shining with
enthusiasm, as he lectured to his young audience at Lyons.
There was never a word of self; of what he had done or
hoped to do. Boastings or mock humilities were equally
foreign to him. The mysteries of Nature, the workings of
life and death, absorbed him. And so the students dis-
persed with their minds filled with the wonders they had
heard and which so far outstripped what they had other-
1
Les Grands Problemes Midicaux, par A. Btchamp, p. 61.