Page 137 - Ethel D. Hume - Bešam ili Paster: Izgubljeno poglavlje u istoriji biologije

134 BECHAMP OR PASTEUR?
elbow. There was a compound comminuted fracture of
the articular joints of the forepart of the arm ; the elbow
was largely open. Amputation was imperative and was
performed between seven and eight hours after the acci-
dent. Immediately the amputated arm was carried to
Dr. Estor's laboratory, where he and Dr. Bechamp
examined it. The forearm presented a dry black surface.
Complete insensibility had set in before the operation.
All the symptoms of gangrene were present. Under a
high power of the microscope, microzymas were seen
associated and in chaplets, but no actual bacteria. These
were merely in process offormation. The changes brought
about by the injury had progressed too rapidly to give
them time to develop. This evidence against bacteria as
the origin of the mortification was so convincing that
Professor Estor at once exclaimed: "Bacteria cannot be
the cause of gangrene; they are the effects of it."
Here was the outstanding difference between the micro-
zymian theory and its microbian version, which Pasteur
and his followers were to be instrumental in promulgating.
Pasteur seems to have lacked an understanding of the
basic elements of living matter. In life he compared the
1
body to a barrel of beer or a cask ofwine. To him, it only
appeared an inert collection of chemical compounds; and,
therefore, naturally, after death, he recognised nothing
living in it. Consequently, when life incontrovertibly
appeared, he could only account for it by the invasion
from without of those minute air-borne organisms, whose
reality Bechamp had taught him to understand. But the
explanation of their origin from the cells and tissues of
plant and animal forms took him considerably longer to
fathom, though, as we shall see, he eventually actually
made an unsuccessful attempt to plagiarise Bechamp 's
point of view.
Bechamp and Estor, meanwhile, steadily persevered
with their clinical observations and made a special study,
for instance, of microzymian development in cases of
1 See pp. 79, 8o.