Page 29 - Ethel D. Hume - Bešam ili Paster: Izgubljeno poglavlje u istoriji biologije

26 BfiCHAMP OR PASTEUR?
The younger Bechamp during his stay at Lille had
married a Mile. Josephine Lang from Havre, and, owing
to this new connection, the Bechamp family moved to the
seaboard town and set up in business as chemists. A
scientific laboratory enabled the two strenuous workers to
undertake medical analyses and continue their research.
But, again, the hand of Fate dealt heavily with Antoine
Bechamp. His son Joseph, well known as a clever chemist,
was constantly employed in making chemical assays,
which work occasionally took him out to sea. On one of
these expeditions he caught a severe chill: double
pneumonia set in, and in a few days ended his com-
paratively short and most promising life of forty-four
years.
It was Antoine Bechamp's sad lot to outlive his wife and
his four children. Quite against his wish, his younger
daughter had been persuaded into taking the veil, and
conventual severities brought about her death at an early
age. His elder daughter had married at Montpellier in
1872, M. Edouard Gasser, who owned vineyards at
Remigny, and left five children, one daughter and four
sons, one of whom was at an early age carried off by
typhus, while the other three lived to do service for
France in the Great War.
Joseph Bechamp left six children, four daughters and
two sons, one of whom died young. The other had no
taste for science and disposed of his father's pharmacy and
laboratory. He died a bachelor in 19 15.
Antoine Bechamp's younger son, Donat, who died in
1902, married a Mile. Marguerite Delarue, and left three
sons, the two younger of whom were destined to lay down
their lives in the Great War. The eldest, then a doctor in
the Russian Army, narrowly escaped death by drowning
through the sinking of the hospital ship "Portugal" by a
German submarine. Sole living male representative of his
grandfather, he is said to inherit the same genius. Without
the least effort, he has taken diplomas in medicine,
chemistry and microscopy, and with the same facility has