Prlparaiokv ic) Ri;si;arch Cari:i;r 77 



of known composition and the careful chemical study of products of de- 

 composition all belong to this early period of Pasteur's life and were 

 achievements of the deepest significance for the future of the great 

 department of knowledge which has revivified the biological sciences. 



Another research on fermentation deserves more than passing notice on 

 account of the extraordinary discovery which appears as its almost acci- 

 dental by-product. This is the investigation on butyric acid ferments 

 (1861). This research brought to light the fact that there are motile 

 organisms capable of inducing a decomposition of sugar with the pro- 

 duction of butyric acid. In the course of this research Pasteur saw that 

 these organisms (whose motility was most puzzling on account of its 

 suggesting animal life), behaved very differently according to their posi- 

 ^tion with reference to the cover-glass, those at the center being active, 

 while those at the periphery and exposed to the air were checked in their 

 movements. From this casual observation came the fundamental concep- 

 tion of anaerobic life. 



Smith's text-book reading was mostly on botany. But by 1884 

 he was keeping informed of the latest in bacteriology. In a letter 

 to his Swedish correspondent, G. Hyltcn-Cavallius, he told him 

 how "extremely interesting" he was finding Julius von Sachs's 

 Vorlesungen ilher Pflanzen-Physiologie, and added: "In this 

 country we are now greatly interested in the study of the bacteria. 

 All foreign publications are speedily put before our people by the 

 journals, and some original work is also being done." It was this 

 year that Smith made available to the Michigan State Board of 

 Health a digest or report — said to have consisted of some 180 

 pages ^^'^ — of European and American publications on sanitation, 

 hygiene, pathology, and bacteriology. Since September 1883, he 

 had been supplying to The Sanitary News of Chicago translations 

 and notes culled from foreign literature. Within a few months at 

 least four translations, articles, or notes had been published: " The 

 Sanitary Improvement of Paris ";^^' "The Sanitary Condition of 

 Damietta (Egypt) and the Cholera ";'^^ "Sanitary Inspection of 



*®*L. R. Jones, Biographical memoir of Erwin Frink Smith 1854-1927, Nat. 

 Acad. Sd. Mem. 21: 4, first memoir. The author has not been able to find where 

 this was published, if it was published at all. He, however, has been informed by 

 Dr. Frederick V. Rand, who prepared the bibliography and part of the subject 

 matter of this memoir that Dr. Jones's source of information probably was Dr. 

 Vaughan. 



^^' Sanitary News 2 (23): 129-130, Oct. 1, 1883. 



'■'"'Idem, 2 (24): 137, Oct. 15, 1883. See also, Erwin F. Smith, The influence 

 of sewerage and water-supply on the death rate in cities, supplement to the Annual 

 Report of the Michigan State Board of Health for the year 1885, and reprint, pp. 



