Page 22 - Ethel D. Hume - Bešam ili Paster: Izgubljeno poglavlje u istoriji biologije

ANTOINE BfiCHAMP '9
Another work of his that was to prove especially prolific
in results was his application of polarimetric measure-
ments to his observations on the soluble ferments. The
polarimeter, that instrument in which light is polarised or
made to vibrate in one plane by means of one Nicol prism
and examined by means of a second Nicol prism, was
utilised by him in experiments, the general results of
which were that he was enabled before any other worker
to define and isolate a number offerments to which he was
also the first to give the name of zymases. In dealing with
this work later on, we shall show how his discovery, even
1
to its nomenclature, has been attributed to somebody else.
So interminable were Bechamp's labours, so numerous
his discoveries, that it is hard to know which to single out.
He studied the monobasic acids and their ethers and in-
vented a method of preparing the chlorides of acid radicles
be means of the derivatives of phosphorous. He made
researches upon lignin, the characteristic constituent of
the cell-walls of wood-cells, and showed clearly the
difference between the substituted organic nitro-com-
pounds, like ethyl nitrite and the nitro-paraffins. As we
j
shall see subsequently, he was the first really to establish
the occurrence in, and distribution by, the atmosphere of
micro-organisms, such as yeast, and to explain the direct
agent in fermentation to be the soluble ferment secreted
by the cells of yeast and other such moulds. Cleverest of/
chemists and microscopists, he was also a naturalist and a*
doctor, and gradually his chemical work led him on to his
astonishing biological discoveries. The explanation of the
formation of urea by the oxidation of albuminoid matters
and his clear demonstrations of the specificity of the latter
formed only part of the strenuous labours that led to his
discovery that the "molecular granulations" of the cells assist in
fermentation, that they are autonomous entities, the living principle,
vegetable and animal, the originators of bodily processes, the
factors of pathological conditions, the agents of decomposition,
while, incidentally, he believed them to be capable of evolving into
bacteria.
1
See pp. 74, 75> 162.