Page 66 - Ethel D. Hume - Bešam ili Paster: Izgubljeno poglavlje u istoriji biologije

CLAIMS AND CONTRADICTIONS 63
it is in thus spending it that we enrich ourselves more and
more."
Unfortunately, we find a great contrast in Pasteur, who,
it cannot be gainsaid, from the start, according to the old
records, repeatedly arrogated to himself the discoveries of
B^champ, beginning with those of 1857.
The Beacon Experiment had flashed illumination into
the darkness of sponteparist views just at a time when the
controversy on spontaneous generation was destined to
flame out anew. At the end of December, 1858, M.
Pouchet, Director of the Natural History Museum of
Rouen, sent up to the Academy of Science a "Note on
Vegetable and Animal Proto-Organisms Spontaneously
Generated in Artificial Air and in Oxygen-Gas." The
subject again gripped public interest. Professor Bechamp,
seizing every spare moment for continued research, was
too much occupied working to take much part in talking.
Pasteur, on the contrary, kept everyone well acquainted
with the experiments he purposed to undertake. There
were said to be living organisms, germs, in the atmo-
sphere; so he decided microscopically to investigate air.
The method ofdoing so, by filtering it into glass flasks, had
already been inaugurated by two Germans, Schroeder and
Dusch. Experimenting in the same way, Pasteur made
comparisons between the different contents of phials,
which, according to him, varied with the admission of
atmospheric dust and remained unaltered in examples
where this was excluded. But he was not content with
laboratory and cellar experiments and planned to make
observations that would be more striking and picturesque.
Keeping everyone well notified of his proceedings, in
September, i860, he started on a tour, armed with
73
phials, which he opened and then summarily sealed at
different places and at varying altitudes. The last 20 he
reserved for the Mer de Glace above Ghamonix, with the
result that in only one of the twenty were the contents
found to be altered. From this time, the autumn of i860,
Pasteur, the former Sponteparist, veered round to a com-