Page 54 - Ethel D. Hume - Bešam ili Paster: Izgubljeno poglavlje u istoriji biologije

BECHAMP'S BEACON EXPERIMENT 51
during the months ofJune, July, August and September.
This was noteworthy, for there was nothing to prevent the
action of the water, had spontaneous alteration been
Nature's method, according to the then prevalent opinion.
Furthermore, although the creosoted solutions were in
contact with air from the start, and these particular flasks
were left open, they underwent no variation and showed
no trace of moulds, not even the solution to which
arsenious acid had been added.
Finally, to return to solution No. 2, moulds appeared
before May 30th, with evidence on that date of a diminu-
tion of the rotation, which continued to decline, in spite of
the fact that onJune 30th one drop ofcreosote was added.
The great worker tells us in his Preface to his work Le
Sang that these different observations impressed him in the
same way as the swing of the cathedral lamp had im-
pressed Galileo in the sixteenth century.
At the period in which he worked, it was believed that
fermentation could not take place except in the presence of
albuminoid matter. We have already seen that Pasteur
operated with yeast broth, a complex albuminoid solution.
In the media prepared by Bechamp there were, on the
contrary, no albuminoid substances. He had operated
with carefully distilled water and pure cane-sugar which,
so he tells us, when heated with fresh-slaked lime, did not
disengage ammonia. Yet moulds, obviously living organ-
isms and thus necessarily containing albuminoid matter,
had appeared in his chemical solutions.
He was awestruck by his discovery, his genius already
affording him hints of all it portended. Had he been
Pasteur, the country would have rung with the news of it;
he would have described the facts by letter to all his
acquaintances. Instead, being Bechamp, without a
thought of self, immersed in the secrets Nature disclosed,
his only anxiety was to start new experiments, consider
fresh revelations.
The results ofthe observations he recorded in a Memoir,
which he sent up immediately, in December, 1857, to the