FERMENTATION. 285 



of two or three years. What the annual fatality is 

 throughout Europe I have no means of knowing. 

 Doubtless it must be very great. The question, then, 

 which I wish to submit to your judgment is this: Is 

 the knowledge which reveals to us the nature, and 

 which assures the extirpation, of a disorder so virulent 

 and so vile, worth the price paid for it? It is exceed- 

 ingly important that assemblies like the present should 

 see clearly the issues at stake in such questions as this, 

 and that the properly informed sense of the community 

 should temper, if not restrain, the rashness of those 

 who, meaning to be tender, become agents of cruelty 

 by the imposition of short-sighted restrictions upon 

 physiological investigations. It is a modern instance 

 of zeal for God, but not according to knowledge, the 

 excesses of which must be corrected by an instructed 

 public opinion. 



And now let us cast a backward glance on the field 

 we have traversed, and try to extract from our labours 

 such further profit as they can yield. For more than 

 two thousand years the attraction of light bodies by 

 amber was the sum of human knowledge regarding 

 electricity, and for more than two thousand years fer- 

 mentation was effected without any knowledge of its 

 cause. In science one discovery grows out of another, 

 and cannot appear without its proper antecedent. Thus, 

 before fermentation could be understood, the micro- 

 scope had to be invented, and brought to a considerable 

 degree of perfection. Note the growth of knowledge. 

 Leeuwenhoek, in 1680, found yeast to be a mass of float- 

 ing globules, but he had no notion that the globules were 

 alive. This was proved in 1835 by Cagniard de la Tour 

 and Schwann. Then came the question as to the origin 

 of such microscopic organisms, and in this connection 



