Page 68 - Ethel D. Hume - Bešam ili Paster: Izgubljeno poglavlje u istoriji biologije

CLAIMS AND CONTRADICTIONS 65

"M. Bechamp quoted some experiments" (those of the
Memoir of 1857) "wherein the transformation of cane-
sugar into grape-sugar effected under the influence of the
air, is always accompanied by moulds. These experiments
agree with the results obtained by M. Pasteur, who
hastened to acknowledge that the fact put forward by
M. Bechamp is one of the most rigid exactness"
We cannot help thinking that Pasteur might also have
added an admission that his associate had been in the
field before him. A further point to be noticed is Pasteur's
later contradiction of his own words, for Bechamp's work,
here described by him as rigidly exact, was later to be
accused by him as guilty of "an enormity."
1
We turn to the Etudes sur la Biere: "I must repudiate
a claim of priority raised by M. Bechamp. It is known
that I was the first to demonstrate that living ferments can
be entirely constituted from their germs deposited in pure
water into which sugar, ammonia and phosphates have
been introduced and protected from light and green
matter. M. Bechamp, relying on the old fact that moulds
arise in sugared water, and according to him, invert the
sugar, pretends to have proved that organized living
ferments can arise in media deprived of albuminoid
matters. To be logical, M. Bechamp should say that he
has proved that moulds arise in pure sugared water with-
out nitrogen, without phosphates or other mineral ele-
ments, for that is an enormity that can be deduced from his
work, in which there is not even the expression of the least
astonishment that moulds have been able to grow in pure
water with pure sugar without other mineral or organic
principles."
How was it then that the present traducer ofBechamp's
work should, as we have already shown, have earlier des-
cribed that self-same work as possessing "rigid exactness?"
Can it be that it is only when it is likely to eclipse Pasteur's
that it turns into "an enormity"? And how did Pasteur
come to omit all reference to the admittance of air,
1
p. 310 (note).