Page 58 - Ethel D. Hume - Bešam ili Paster: Izgubljeno poglavlje u istoriji biologije

BfiGHAMP'S BEACON EXPERIMENT 55
To recapitulate, in a short summary, he taught that
cane-sugar was a proximate principle unalterable by
solution in water. He taught that the air had in itself no
effect upon it, but that owjng to its importation of living
organisms, the apparent effect of air was all-important.
He showed that these organisms, insoluble themselves,
brought about the process offermentation by means of the
acids they generated, which acids were regarded as "the
soluble ferments. He taught that the way to prevent the
invasion of organisms in the sugared solution was by first
slightly creosoting the medium; but if the organisms had
appeared before creosote was added, he showed that its
subsequent addition would have no power to arrest their
development and the consequent inversion of the sugar.
For further revelations, we cannot do better than quote
two or three paragraphs from Bechamp's own summary of
his discovery in the Preface to his last work Le Sang — The
1
—
Blood.
There he writes: "It resulted that the soluble ferment
was allied to the insoluble by the reaction of product to
producer; the soluble ferment being unable to exist with-
out the organised ferment, which is necessarily insoluble.
"Further, as the soluble ferment and the albuminoid
matter, being nitrogenous, could only be formed by ob-
taining the nitrogen from the limited volume of air left in
the flasks, it was at the same time demonstrated that the
free nitrogen of the air could help directly in the synthesis
of the nitrogenous substance of plants; which up to that
time had been a disputed question. 2
"Thus it became evident that since the material forming
the structure of moulds and yeasts was elaborated within
the organism, it must also be true that the soluble ferments
and products of fermentation are also secreted there, as
was the case with the soluble ferment that inverted the
cane-sugar. Hence I became assured that that which is
1
p. 16.
2
It is now considered that atmospheric nitrogen can only be utilized by a
few special plants (Natural order—Luguminosae) and then under special
conditions.