PASTEUR'S RESEARCHES IN GERM-LIFE. 89 



tion, to which the researches of Pouchet had just given fresh interest. 

 Trained as Pasteur was in the experimental sciences, he had an im- 

 mense advantage over Pouchet, whose culture was derived from the 

 sciences of observation. One by one the statements and experiments 

 of Pouchet were explained or overthrown, and the doctrine of spon- 

 taneous generation remained discredited until it was revived with 

 ardor, ability, and, for a time, with success, by Dr. Bastian. 



A remark of M. Radot's on page 103 needs some qualification. 

 "The great interest of Pasteur's method consists," he says, "in its 

 proving unanswerably that the origin of life in infusions which have 

 been heated to the boiling-point is solely due to the solid particles 

 suspended in the air." This means that living germs can not exist in 

 the liquid when once raised to a temperature of 212 Fahr. No doubt 

 a great number of organisms collapse at this temperature ; some, in- 

 deed, as M. Pasteur has shown, are destroyed at a temperature 90 

 below the boiling-point. But this is by no means universally the case. 

 The spores of the hay-bacillus, for example, have in numerous in- 

 stances successfully resisted the boiling temperature for one, two, three, 

 four hours ; while in one instance eight hours' continuous boiling failed 

 to sterilize an infusion of desiccated hay. The knowledge of this fact 

 caused me a little anxiety some years ago when a meeting was pro- 

 jected between M. Pasteur and Dr. Bastian. For though, in regard 

 to the main question, I knew that the upholder of spontaneous genera- 

 tion could not win, on the particular issue touching the death tem- 

 perature he might have come off victor. 



The manufacture and maladies of wine next occupied Pasteur's 

 attention. He had, in fact, got the key to this whole series of prob- 

 lems, and he knew how to use it. Each of the disorders of wine was 

 traced to its specific organism, which, acting as a ferment, produced 

 substances the reverse of agreeable to the palate. By the simplest of 

 devices, Pasteur, at a stroke, abolished the causes of wine-disease. 

 Fortunately the foreign organisms which, if unchecked, destroy the 

 best red wines, are extremely sensitive to heat. A temperature of 50 

 C. (122 Fahr.) suffices to kill them. Bottled wines once raised to 

 this temperature, for a single minute, are secured from subsequent de- 

 terioration. The wines suffer in no degree from exposure to this tem- 

 perature. The manner in which Pasteur proved this, by invoking the 

 judgment of the wine-tasters of Paris, is as amusing as it is interest- 

 ing. 



Moved by the entreaty of his master, the illustrious Dumas, Pasteur 

 took up the investigation of the diseases of silk-worms at a time when 

 the silk-husbandry of France was in a state of ruin. In doing so he 

 did not, as might appear, entirely forsake his former line of research. 

 Previous investigators had got so far as to discover vibratory corpus- 

 cles in the blood of the diseased worms, and with such corpuscles 

 Pasteur had already made himself intimately acquainted. He was, 



