Page 93 - Ethel D. Hume - Bešam ili Paster: Izgubljeno poglavlje u istoriji biologije

BfiCHAMP OR PASTEUR?
unit of life in all forms, vegetable and animal, and
sponteparist opinions were held by a large body of
experimenters, including, at that time, Pasteur. In the
midst of this confusion of ideas, Bechamp clung firmly to
two axioms:—Firstly, that no chemical change takes
place without a provocative cause. Secondly, that there is
no spontaneous generation of any living organism.
Meanwhile, he concentrated his mind upon the "little
bodies."
He realised, at the start, that if those he had discovered
in chalk were really organised beings, with a separate
independent life of their own, he ought to be able to isolate
them, prove them to be insoluble in water, and find them
composed of organic matter. He succeeded in isolating
them and proved carbon, hydrogen, etc., to be their
component parts and demonstrated their insolubility. If
they were living beings, it followed that it must be possible
to kill them. Here, again, he found the truth of his con-
tention, for when he heated chalk, together with a little
water, to 300 G. (572 F.), he afterwards proved it to
have become devoid of its former fermentative power.
The "little bodies" were now quite devoid of the move-
ment that before had characterised them. Among other
points, he discovered that if, during the process of fer-
mentation by these minute organisms, all foreign in-
vasions were guarded against by rigid precautions, the
little bodies increased and multiplied. This observation
was to stand him in good stead in his subsequent 1
researches.
Bechamp observed that the chalk he had used seemed to
be formed mostly of the mineral remains of a microscopic
world, long since vanished, which fossil-remains, according
to Ehrenberg, belong to two species, called Polythalamis and
Nautilce and which are so minute that more than two
millions would be found in a piece of chalk weighing one
hundred grammes. But, over and above these remains of
extinct beings, the Professor saw that the white chalk con-
1 La Thiorie du Microzyma, par A, Bichamp, pp. 113, 114.