CONCLUDING EXAMINATION 191 

organisms, then the fact of fermentability persisting 
in an organic liquid after it had been heated to 
105. C. (221° F.), would, of course, have been a 
proof that living organisms in some form could 
withstand the influence of such a temperature. 
M. Pasteur found that specimens of milk, and of 
sweetened yeast-water neutralised by carbonate of 
lime, would, in fact, often ferment after they had 
been heated to 105° C.; and he very soon arrived 
at the conclusion that this was owing to the survival 
of Bacteria and Vibrio germs in these fluids. Find- 
ing, however, that in his hands even such fluids 
were invariably sterilised after they had been ex- 
posed for a few minutes to a temperature of 110° C. 
(230 F.), M. Pasteur proclaimed that such a degree 
of heat was certainly destructive of all germs in 
fluids—even in those above mentioned where, as he 
thought, they most stubbornly resisted the destruc- 
tive influence of heat. - 
The experiments already recorded have shown 
that Pasteur’s explanation of the cause of the fer- 
mentation of the neutral fluids after boiling and after 
heating them to 105 C., is without sufficient founda- 
tion in fact—that it is, in short, directly negatived 
by strict crucial experiments. 
I now have to bring forward additional evidence 
tending to show that the induction of this same dis- 
tinguished investigator as to the invariable barren- 
ness of neutral liquids after they have been heated to 
110° C., is also one which is overthrown by a wider 
experience. By having resort to a simple physical 
agency (viz., a higher incubating-temperature than 
