110 PASTEUR: THE HISTORY OF A MIND 



their experiments, they would have embarrassed the 

 Commission very much, and Pasteur would not 

 then have known how to reply to them. 



It is in reality quite true that if one opens, at any 

 point whatsoever on the globe, flasks filled with a 

 decoction of hay, as Pouchet, Joly and Musset did, 

 it often happens that all the flasks become clouded 

 and filled with living organisms. In other words, with 

 this infusion the experiments of Pasteur with the 

 water of yeast do not succeed, and one is led to admit 

 that the ah* which enters into all the flasks carries 

 germs into them. 



Let us say immediately that the germs of this air 

 are a negligible quantity, and that any one would 

 obtain the same result by filling the flasks with ah* 

 sterilized by heat. The fact is that the germs already 

 exist in the infusion. They have resisted boiling, 

 as is the case with a great number of micro-organisms. 

 They have remained inert as long as the flask, sealed 

 during the boiling, remains devoid of air. They 

 develop when the ah* enters, thanks to its oxygen. 

 But Pasteur did not yet know this fact. Pouchet, 

 Musset and Joly were not any more aware of it, but 

 if they were ignorant of the explanation, they had 

 observed the fact, and if they had been better experi- 

 menters, more men of the laboratory, if they had studied 

 more thoroughly the conditions of their success, they 

 would have accepted the challenge, and would have 

 won the battle, or at least each of the adversaries would 

 have retained his own position. 



Perhaps it would have been better had things taken 

 this turn, and the Academic commission been obliged 

 to determine that all of the adversaries were right, 

 instead of putting an end to its labors by a bulletin 

 announcing the victory of one of them. Pasteur would 



