Page 45 - Ethel D. Hume - Bešam ili Paster: Izgubljeno poglavlje u istoriji biologije

42 BfiCHAMP OR PASTEUR?
good many years earlier to account for the maggots found
in bad meat, until it had occurred to the Italian, Francesco
Redi, to keep flies from contact.
Here the reader may interpolate that Pasteur's vision,
although still obscured, was gradually piercing the fogs of
the mystery. But, as it happened, those fogs were by this
time dispersed: a "beacon experiment" was shedding light
on the difficulty. In 1855 and in 1857 there had been
presented to the French' Academy of Science Memoirs
that were to prove the lode-star of future science, and it
seems high time that now, more than half a century after-
wards, credit should be given where credit is due in regard
to them. And here let us turn to the outcome of work
undertaken in a quiet laboratory by one who, perhaps un-
fortunately for the world, was no adept in the art of adver-
tisement and was too much immersed in his discoveries
to be at that time concerned about his proprietary right
to them. Let us again open the old French documents
and see for ourselves what Professor Antoine Bechamp
had to say on the subject of the vexed question of fermen-
tation.