ii 4 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



II. The Fundamentally Anaerobic Character of the Vital Process. 

 — The first wide breach in the ancient dogma that oxygen 

 played an essential part in vital metabolism came from the 

 researches of Pasteur; his work was the first which distinctly 

 showed that the vital process was to be correlated with the 

 process of fermentation. It was he, indeed, who defined fermen- 

 tation as " life without air," that is without oxygen as such. 

 It is among the further ironies that though the long strife 

 between the followers of Pasteur and the followers of Liebig, 

 over the chemical nature of fermentation, was ended finally and 

 decisively in 1897 by Buchner's epoch-making discovery of 

 zymase, most biologists still cling implicitly to Pasteur's ideas 

 of life in spite of the proof that Pasteur himself supplied that 

 life and fermentation are one and the same thing. 1 



Pasteur showed that in the case of certain of the lower 

 organisms the life process could be carried on in the absence 

 of oxygen. But the generalisation of this fact, that anaerobiosis 

 is fundamentally true of the vital processes in all organisms, was 

 first clearly set forth, apparently, by Hoppe-Seyler. This con- 

 clusion was implied in the work of Spallanzani and indeed was 

 distinctly stated by him in the latter part of the eighteenth 

 century. This amazingly fertile and pioneering man had studied 

 the production of carbonic acid in the case of living and dead 

 snails " in azotic (nitrogen) and hydrogen gas and in common 

 air." Summing up (memoir cited, p. 351) he said : 



" I shall only conclude from these experiments that it is 

 clearly proved that the carbonic acid gas produced by living 

 and dead snails in common air did not result from the at- 

 mospheric oxygen, since an equal and even greater quantity 

 was obtained in azotic and hydrogen gas." 



Spallanzani was a full three-quarters of a century ahead of 

 his time. It is instances like this that serve to remind us at 

 times of the large amount of clear-sighted work which remains 

 unrecognised. 



Hoppe-Seyler's investigations were formulated in the first 

 volume of his Physiological Chemistry, published in 1877. His 

 cautious conclusion was stated in the following words : 



1 For historical review with full literature cf. Ahrens, Das Garungsproblem 

 (Stuttgart, 1902). 



