Page 145 - Ethel D. Hume - Bešam ili Paster: Izgubljeno poglavlje u istoriji biologije

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Bfi CHAMP OR PASTEUR?
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Pasteur, following the opinion of Raspail, and, trying to
verify the hypothesis experimentally, maintains that
physicians are in error: the active cause of our maladies
resides in disease-germs created at the origin of all things,
which, having gained an invisible entry into us, there
develop into parasites. For M. Pasteur, as for Raspail,
there is no spontaneous disease; without microbes there
would be no sicknesses, no matter what we do, despite our
imprudences, miseries or vices! The system, neither new
nor original, is ingenious, very simple in its subtlety, and,
in consequence, easy to understand and to propagate.
The most illiterate of human beings to whom one has
shown the connection between the acarus and the itch
understands that the itch is the disease of the acarus. Thus
it comes about that it has seduced many people, who give
an unthinking triumph to it. Above all, men of the world
are carried away by a specious easy doctrine, all the more
applicable to generalities and vague explanations in that
it is badly based upon proved and tried scientific
5 9
demonstrations
Yes, unfortunately for the great teacher of Montpellier,
deeper knowledge, an understanding of that science,
cytology, so neglected, as Professor Minchin has com-
1
plained, even now in the twentieth century, was, and still
seems to be, required to comprehend the profounder,
more mystic and complicated workings of pathology.
Nature was performing experiments, which were open to
all to read with the help of the microscope. But few were
sufficiently skilled to probe deep enough under what may
often be misleading superficialities. Few possessed enough
knowledge to understand the complexities revealed to
Bechamp. Yet, from the start, he warned the world
against being misled by too facile judgments. As early as
1869, he wrote: 2 "In typhoid fever, in gangrene, in an-
thrax, the existence has been proved of bacteria in the
tissues and in the blood, and one was very much disposed
1
Presidential Address—British Association, September, 1915.
2
Comptes Rendus de VAcademic des Sciences 75, p. 1525.