Annual Address. 99 



III, — On some Becent Investigations into Minute Organisms. 



By Henry J. Slack, F.G.S., Sec. E.M.S. 



In consequence of the lamented deatli of our esteemed President, the 

 preparation of this portion of the Anniversary Address has been con- 

 fided to me, and it seemed advisable to select for your consideration 

 certain matters connected with minute organisms, which may not 

 only prove of immediate interest, but also suggest many topics for 

 furtlier research. The microscopical work of each year assists in 

 elevating the lower fungi, and the whole class of bodies to which 

 such terms as ferments or "microzymes" are applied, into ever- 

 increasing importance ; and if the principal statements now asserted 

 concerning them can be established, they must be deemed essential 

 to the processes of life, to the production of various forms of disease, 

 and to all the ordinary operations by which decay disintegrates 

 dead masses, and prepares their constituents for fresh admission into 

 the circle of organic being. 



One distinguished inquirer, M. Bechamp, makes the startling 

 announcement that blood corpuscles are aggregates of microzymes, 

 or micro-ferments, and can give rise to chaplets of beads, bacteria, 

 bacterides, and other forms. He further states that they behave hke 

 ferments, that they give birth to cells like leucocytes, and to smaller 

 globules. These microzymes, he says, are capable of engendering 

 cells in various media, and the blood corpuscle is the result of their 

 work.* According to this view, resphation, which has long been 

 regarded as a mode of nutrition, may be classed amongst the 

 phenomena named fermentations. Such are M. Bechamp's con- 

 clusions. 



In 1867 M. Bechamp, together with Messrs. Estor and Saint- 

 pierre, stated that the digestive action of saliva upon starch depended 

 upon a ferment, and was not a simple chemical action. This fer- 

 ment he describes as " secreted by the organisms of Leewenhoek," as 

 they nourish themselves with the materials of the starch.f 



In the germination of plants from seeds containing starch and 

 other matters, a similar process is described by M. Le Maire, who 

 states that vibriones and monads appear before the germination 

 begins.ij: In 1870 M. L. Coutaret informed the French Academy 

 that he had succeeded in showing that maltine or vegetable diastase 

 obtained from barley possessed the same properties as salivary 

 diastase ; that it is a vegetable ptyaline identical with the animal 

 one in physical, chemical, and physiological properties. In 1868 

 MM. Bechamp and Estor were led by a series of experiments to 

 affirm that molecular granulations, or microzymes are universally 



* ' Comptes Kendus,' 7 Feb., 1870. f C. R. for that year. 



% ' Comptes Eendus,' 1863, Sec. Sem., p. 563. 



