Page 62 - Ethel D. Hume - Bešam ili Paster: Izgubljeno poglavlje u istoriji biologije

CHAPTER V
Claims and Contradictions

Professor Bechamp's great series of observations, which
indeed seem to merit the name of the "Beacon Experi-
ment/' clearly demonstrated the possibility of the
appearance of ferments in a medium devoid of albu-
minoid matter. As this fact had been disbelieved till this
date, it is evident that Bechamp was the first to establish
it. We may search through the old scientific records and
fail to find any such demonstration by anyone. We can
read for ourselves that Pasteur's procedure in 1857 was
entirely different. Influenced by the prevalent belief,
what he did, as we have already seen, was to take the
ferment developed in an ordinary fermentation and sow it
in yeast broth, a complex solution of albuminoid and
mineral matters. Thus he obtained what he called his
lactic fermentation. Neither does he seem to have been
entirely successful in his deductions from his observations.
He announced that the lactic globules "take birth spon-
taneously in the body of the albuminoid liquid furnished
by the soluble part of the yeast," and also that "they take
birth spontaneously with as much facility as beer-yeast."
There can be no question of the contrast between these
sponteparist views and the clear, simple, explanation of
Bechamp! No conscientious reader can compare the two
workers' original documents without being struck by their
disparity.
Where Pasteur's work was more allied to Bechamp's was
in an experiment recorded among the Reports of the
French Academy of Science in February, 1859, m°re than
a year after the publication of Bechamp's Beacon Experi-
ment. So, certainly, from the point of date alone, it in no
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