NEW CONCEPTIONS IN SCIENCE 



these fermentive actions in a word, to demon- 

 strate that they are alike due to specific substances, 

 the ferments. Half a century of toilsomely gathered 

 materials was that day fused in a unified body of 

 knowledge. 



Meanwhile, almost in the same year, an ingeni- 

 ous young Frenchman, Gabriel Bertrand by name, 

 made a curious observation that was most up- 

 setting. From the days of Lavoisier's celebrated 

 experiments, more than a century old, the physi- 

 ologist had been led to regard the taking up of 

 oxygen and the giving off of carbonic-acid gas by 

 the lungs and in the cells as the simple play of 

 chemical mechanics, a mere question of the vary- 

 ing pressures at the surface of the body (the lungs) 

 and the interior (the cells) The ordinary method of 

 manufacture of commercial oxygen from the air was 

 supposed to be identical. Bertrand found that one 

 condition for the taking up of oxygen by the lungs 

 was the presence of a specific substance, which was 

 itself unaltered, could be destroyed by heating or 

 by various acids and poisons, temporarily rendered 

 inactive by ether and other anaesthetics in brief, 

 comported itself exactly as a ferment. Destroy 

 this ferment, and you cannot breathe you will 

 die. Bertrand named it, accordingly, oxydase. 



But the idea that a ferment was necessary to 

 seize the oxygen in the lungs and hand it over to 



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