Page 90 - Ethel D. Hume - Bešam ili Paster: Izgubljeno poglavlje u istoriji biologije

PART TWO

THE MICROZYMAS

CHAPTER VIII
The "Little Bodies"
Just as certain musicians seem born with a natural facility
for a particular instrument, so in the world of science,
from time to time, men arise who appear specially gifted
in the use of technical intruments. It was, no doubt,
Professor Bechamp's extraordinary proficiency as a
microscopist, as well as the insight of genius, that enabled
him from the start of his work to observe so much that
other workers ignored when employing the microscope;
while his inventive brain led to an application of the
polarimeter which greatly assisted him. His powers com-
bined in a remarkable degree the practical and theoretical.
Instead of failing, like many men of big brain capacity,
when manual dexterity was needed, the Professor's deft
fingers and keen-sighted eyes were ever the agile assistants
of his mighty intellect.
From the time of his earliest observations, he was quick
to notice minute microscopic objects, much smaller in
size than the cells of the organisms he examined. He was
by no means the first to observe these; others had done so
before him; but although they applied to them such
names as "scintillating corpuscles," "molecular granula-
tions" and so forth, no one was much the wiser as to their
status and function. Most of what had been said about
them was summed up in Charles Robin's definition in the
Dictionary of Medicine and Surgery (1858), in which he
described the minuteness of "very small granulations
formed of organised substance" found in the tissues, cells,
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