BACTERIA IN DAILY LIFE 



BACTERIOLOGY 

 IN THE VICTORIAN ERA 



A LITTLE more than sixty years ago the 

 JL\. scientific world received with almost in- 

 credulous astonishment the announcement that 

 " beer yeast consists of small spherules which have 

 the property of multiplying, and are therefore a 

 living and not a dead chemical substance, that 

 they further appear to belong to the vegetable 

 kingdom, and to be in some manner intimately 

 connected with the process of fermentation." 



When Cagniard Latour communicated the above 

 observations on yeast to the Paris Academy of 

 Sciences on June 12, 1837, the whole scientific 

 world was taken by storm, so great was the 

 novelty, boldness, and originality of the concep- 

 tion that these insignificant particles, hitherto 

 reckoned as of little or no account, should be 

 B 



