532 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 
swaddling bands of the past. It is now in danger of being 
stupefied by the one, or strangled by the other. I look, 
however, forward to a time when the strength, insight, 
and elevation which now visit us in mere hints and 
glimpses, during moments "of clearness and vigor," shall 
be the stable and permanent possession of purer and 
mightier minds than ours purer and mightier, partly 
because of their deeper knowledge of matter and their 
more faithful conformity to its laws. 
CHAPTER XXXIV. 
FERMENTATION, AND ITS BEARINGS ON SURGERY AND 
MEDICINE.* 
ONE OF the most remarkable characteristics of the age 
in which we live, is its desire and tendency to connect 
itself organically with preceding ages to ascertain how 
the state of things that now is came to be what it is. And 
the more earnestly and profoundly this problem is studied, 
the more clearly comes into view the vast and varied debt 
which the world of to-day owes to that fore-world, in 
which man by skill, valor, and well-directed -strength first 
replenished and subdued the earth. Our prehistoric 
fathers may have been savages, but they were clever and 
observant ones. They founded agriculture by the dis- 
covery and development of seeds whose origin is now un- 
known. They tamed and harnessed their animal antag- 
onists, and sent them down to us as ministers, instead of 
rivals in the fight for life. Later on, when the claims of 
luxury added themselves to those of necessity, we find the 
same spirit of invention at work. We have no historic 
account of the first brewer, but we glean from history that 
his art was practiced, and its produce relished, more than 
two thousand years ago. Theophrastus, who was born 
nearly four hundred years before Christ, described beer as 
the wine of barley. It is extremely difficult to preserve 
beer in a hot country, still Egypt was the land in which it 
was first brewed, the desire of man to quench his thirst 
* A Discourse delivered before the Glasgow Science Lectures 
Association, October 19, 1876. 
