Page 135 - Ethel D. Hume - Bešam ili Paster: Izgubljeno poglavlje u istoriji biologije

BfiCHAMP OR PASTEUR?
132
wise learned that the full meaning, no doubt, barely went
home and they had small idea of the genius of the great
man, devoid of self-praise, who had lectured so un-
ostentatiously to them.
What wonderful times those were for the great teacher
when his views developed with such rapidity, and con-
tinuously by day, and often half through the night, he
worked at the unravelling of Nature's mysteries; while
with him, for a series of years, toiled his devoted colleague,
Professor Estor.
"Ah! how moving," wrote Bechamp, 1 "were the in-
numerable seances at which we assisted, amazed by the
confirmation of ideas, the verification of facts, and the
development of the theory." And with that large-hearted
—
generosity, as natural to him as it was alas! foreign to
Pasteur, he added: "During the period from 1868 to
1876 all that concerns the microzymas of animal organs
was common to both of us, and I do not know how to
distinguish between what is mine and what is Estor's."
We can faintly realise the emotion of the discoverers as
they found themselves penetrating closer to the secrets of
life than any man had succeeded in doing before them;
exemplifying and proving that which the great Lavoisier
had felt after in an earlier epoch. And, since they were
both doctors, their labours were not narrowed to the more
or less artificial experiments they undertook in the labora-
tory. Their clinical work brought them constant ex-
perience, and their surest observations were those accom-
plished by the greatest of all experimenters—Nature!
1
La Thiorie du Microzyma, p. 123.