232 THE LIFE OF PASTEUR 



organization of the matter within the egg into those small 

 beings, all eggs should putrefy equally, whereas they do not.'* 

 At the end of M. Gay on 's thesis — which had not taken so 

 long as Raulin's to prepare, only three years — we find the 

 following conclusion: ** Putrefaction in eggs is correlative with 

 the development and multiplication of beings which are bac- 

 teria when in contact with air and vibriones when away from 

 the contact of air. Eggs, from that point of view, do not 

 depart from the general law discovered by M. Pasteur. '* 



Pasteur's influence was now spreading beyond the Labora- 

 tory of Physiological Chemistry, as the small laboratory at the 

 Ecole Normale was called. 



In the treatise he had published in 1862, criticizing the 

 doctrine of spontaneous generation, he had mentioned, among 

 the organisms produced by urine in putrefaction, the exist- 

 ence of a torulacea in very smaU-grained chaplets. A physician, 

 Dr. Traube, in 1864, had demonstrated that Pasteur was right 

 in thinking that ammoniacal fermentation was due to this 

 torulacea, whose properties were afterwards studied with in- 

 finite care by M. Van Tieghem, a former student of the Ecole 

 Normale, who had inspired Pasteur with a deep affection. 

 Pasteur, in his turn, completed his own observations and 

 assured himself that this little organized ferment was to be 

 found in every case of ammoniacal urine. Finally, after prov- 

 ing that boracic acid impeded the development of that am- 

 moniacal ferment, he suggested to M. Guyon, the celebrated 

 surgeon, the use of boracic acid for washing out the bladder; 

 M. Guyon put the advice into practice with success, and attri- 

 buted the credit of it to Pasteur. 



In a letter written at the end of 1873, Pasteur wrote: **How 

 I wish I had enough health and sufficient knowledge to throw 

 myself body and soul into the experimental study of one of 

 our infectious diseases!" He considered that his studies on 

 fermentations would lead him in that direction; he thought 

 that when it should be made evident that every serious altera- 

 tion in beer was due to the micro-organisms which find in 

 that liquid a medium favourable to their development, when 

 it should be seen that — in contradiction to the old ideas by 

 which those alterations are looked upon as spontaneous, in- 

 herent in those liquids, and depending on their nature and 

 composition — the cause of those diseases is not interior but 

 exterior, then would indeed be defeated the doctrine of men 



