BIOGENESIS AND ABIOGENESIS 123 



On this it may be remarked that if this were 

 true the whole edifice which the modern science 

 of bacteriology has built up comes to the ground 

 and that it is a little remarkable that no one 

 of the thousand workers at that subject have 

 ever come in contact with any of the discoveries 

 which Dr Bastian thought that he had made. 



Perhaps the reason for this may be found in 

 a passage in which Dr Bastian * says that : 

 " Bacteriologists, as a result of repeated pro- 

 cesses of heating at brief intervals and often at 

 high temperatures for the special purpose of 

 bringing about complete sterilisation, not only 

 kill all pre-existing micro-organisms, but, as 

 I maintain, destroy also any potential germin- 

 ality of the media themselves. These media, 

 after having been treated as above indicated, 

 will nourish and favour the multiplication of 

 living bacteria with which they are inoculated, 

 but they will never engender them. They be- 

 have, in fact, exactly like a boiled ammonium 

 tartrate solution this also does not engender, 

 but will freely nourish bacteria. As a result of 

 habitually dealing with media thus treated 

 (though they know that, with the exception 

 of the spores of bacilli, all the microbes in their 

 media may be destroyed by being boiled once 

 only, for five minutes or less , bacteriologists 



* P. 312. 



