436 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



1873, there appeared another review of my work 

 in the Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science. 

 This time the article was unsigned; but it has 

 since become known to many persons that it 

 was written by a now distinguished Professor of 

 Comparative Anatomy. After referring to some 

 unsuccessful attempts which had been made by 

 Prof. Burdon-Sanderson to obtain such results 

 as I had indicated, and after dwelling upon other 

 evidence which the reviewer considered adverse 

 to the recognition of the truth of these results, 

 he says : " This evidence is overpowering ; but 

 still Dr. Bastian does not yield." He then con- 

 tinues as follows : 



" We set ourselves at the commencement of 

 this notice the task of determining whether Dr. 

 Bastian had made out a prima-facie case. We 

 cannot say that the various considerations adduced 

 above allow us to hold that he has. . . . Biolo- 

 gists would, we hold, be perfectly justified in re- 

 fusing to be troubled by him any further. Time 

 and skill are not to be wasted in confuting state- 

 ments manifestly uncritical. . . . Nevertheless, 

 in consequence of the interest which Dr. Bastian's 

 work has excited, we have made the experiment, 

 and that repeatedly. This is not the occasion on 

 which to give the details of the experiments in 

 question. It will, however, perhaps add some 

 value to the remarks which it has been our duty 

 to make when we state that, carefully following 

 Dr. Bastian's directions, using at the same time 

 great care as to cleanliness and due boiling, we 

 have obtained results which, in every single in- 

 stance, out of more than forty tubes closed on four 

 separate occasions, simply contradict Dr. Bastian." 



But in the intervening month of December 

 my colleague, Dr. Burdon-Sanderson, had ac- 

 cepted my invitation to allow me to show him the 

 nature of my method and the reality of my re- 

 sults, with the understanding that he should sub- 

 sequently publish an account of them. His de- 

 scription of these experiments bears the date of 

 the 1st of January, 1873, viz., the very day of 

 the publication of the last-mentioned review; 

 and it is to be fouud in Nature of January 8th. 

 As a sequel to the previous quotations, it will be 

 useful to reproduce its closing paragraph : 



" The accuracy of Dr. Bastian's statements of 

 fact, with reference to the particular experiments 

 now under consideration, has been publicly ques- 

 tioned. I myself doubted it, and expressed my 

 doubts, if not publicly, at least in conversation. I 

 am content to have established — at all events to 

 my own satisfaction — that, by following Dr. Bas- 

 tian's directions, infusions can be prepared which 

 are not deprived, by an ebullition of from five to 

 ten minutes, of the faculty of undergoing those 



1 chemical changes which are characterized by the 

 presence of swarms of bacteria, and that the de- 

 velopment of these organisms can proceed with 

 the greatest activity in hermetically-sealed glass 

 vessels, from which almost the whole of the air 

 has been expelled by boiling." 



Subsequently these results were also con- 

 firmed by Prof. Huizinga, of Groningen, and by 

 two or three most competent German investiga- 

 tors. The matter of fact, therefore, was at last 

 considered to be definitely established. 1 



The view enunciated by Mr. Moseley in the 

 Academy in regard to my experiments was sub- 

 stantially similar to that which Prof. Huxley had 

 started at one of the sectional meetings of the 

 British Association in 1870; and although in 

 less than three years from that time it had been, 

 as we have seen, abundantly refuted both in 

 this country and on the Continent, Prof. Tyndall 

 three years later — that is, early in 1876 — at- 

 tempted to deny that such experimental results 

 as mine could be legitimately obtained, and 

 sought to convince the Royal Society and a 

 crowded audience at the Royal Institution that 

 I had fallen into error, and that no such results 

 could be obtained by a skilled experimentalist 

 like himself. In evidence of this he brought for- 

 ward a " cloud of witnesses," all of which, if 

 rightly interpreted, gave very different testimony 

 from that which Prof. Tyndall imagined. But, 

 while he at first strenuously denied my facts, he 

 is now able only to demur to my interpretation. 



All this opposition, as will readily be seen, is 

 to be taken as the measure of the antecedent 

 certainty that all living matter is killed by a 

 brief but real exposure to a temperature of 212° 

 Fahr. 



The modern opponents and supporters of the 

 doctrine of " spontaneous generation " have al- 

 ways been principally concerned with two sets 

 of problems : 1. As to the nature of the material 

 in the air, the access of which is so apt to induce 

 fermentation in suitable fluids ; 2. As to whether 

 some degree of heat below 212° Fahr. can be 

 proved to be always sufficient to destroy the life 

 of different kinds of living matter in the moist 

 state, but especially that of bacteria and fungus 

 germs. 



In regard to the first set of problems, it has 

 been generally agreed for some time that the air 



1 This, of course, was the point originally in dis- 

 pute, and concerning which it was of most importance 

 that there should be no discrepancy. It was to this 

 matter of fact only that Dr. Burdon-Sanderson testi- 

 fied as above. 





