Page 148 - Ethel D. Hume - Bešam ili Paster: Izgubljeno poglavlje u istoriji biologije

A PLAGIARISM FRUSTRATED 145

vibrios are there, nor on the outside, because the vapours
of the alcohol prevent the development of germs on the
surface; but I observed that the meat became tainted in a
pronounced degree, if small in quantity, and gangrenous, if
the meat were in considerable mass."
Pasteur's object was to show that there were no inherent
living elements in meat, that if external life, the germs of
the air, were quite excluded, there would be no bacterial
development from inner organisms. These were the days
in which, having enthusiastically adopted Bechamp's
ideas of the important parts played by the atmospheric
hosts, he denied equally vociferously any inherent living
elements in animal and vegetable bodies.
Bechamp, knowing how his own skill with the micro-
scope outstripped that of all his contemporaries, excused
Pasteur for not having been able to detect the minute
organisms in the depth of the fleshy substance. But he
maintained that Pasteur's own acknowledgment of the
tainted or gangrenous state of the meat should have been
sufficient to have convinced him of the reality of a
chemical change and its correlative necessity—a causative
agent. Bechamp claimed that Pasteur's own experiments,
while attempting to deny, on the contrary, proved the
truth of the microzymian contentions.
For instance, again, in an experiment on boiled milk,
Pasteur observed a smell resembling tallow and noted the
separation of the fatty matter in the form of clots. If there
were nothing living in the milk, how could he account for
the change in its odour and explain the cause ofthe clotting?
Thus it is impossible to set aside the marked contrast
between Bechamp and Pasteur in regard to their attention
to any phenomenon, since by the former nothing was ever
ignored, while the latter constantly passed over most
contradictory evidence. In spite, for example, of all the
marked changes in milk, Pasteur was content to describe
it as unalterable, except through access of germs of the air,
and nothing else than a solution of mineral salts, of milk-
sugar and of casein in which were suspended particles of