98 LOUIS PASTEUR 



The controversy was somewhat analogous to the 

 celebrated discussion of the color of the two sides 

 of the shield. 



This fact was brought out only several years 

 later in the course of a discussion with the cele- 

 brated English champion of the doctrine of spon- 

 taneous generation, Doctor Charlton Bastian. Bas- 

 tian, who was well known in medical circles in 

 England, had written a large, two-volume work 

 entitled "The Beginnings of Life," in which he 

 brought forward much experimental evidence for the 

 spontaneous origin of living organisms, and con- 

 tended that many of the low forms of life passed 

 readily into species of a quite different character. 

 Although his work is full of wrong conclusions 

 based on inaccurate observations, Bastian per- 

 formed several experiments which have been the 

 means of materially advancing our knowledge of 

 the propagation of minute forms of life. Bastian 

 claimed that urine boiled to free it from germs, 

 then rendered alkaline by a solution of boiled 

 potash and set aside to incubate, became swarming 

 with bacteria in nine or ten hours. It is not germs, 

 he claimed, that give rise to the bacteria, but the 

 alkali which supplies a condition necessary for 

 spontaneous generation. 



