330 



DISCOVERY 



and then, in a slanting approach, against his flagships 

 and those following. The result was a m^Le which 

 answered Nelson's expectations of leaving CoUingwood 

 undisturbed in his task of crushing the hostile rear. 



To that trusty and beloved comrade Nelson had left 

 full liberty in the control of the lee division. Its original 

 formation, as we have seen, approximated to a line ; 

 but CoUingwood signalled to some of his ships to spread 

 out somewhat towards the hostile rear, the result being 

 a partial resemblance to what is called a line of bearing. 

 Here, again, tlie crescent formation of the enemy 

 favoured (perhaps even suggested to CoUingwood) this 

 method of approach. Anyhow, some of his rear ships, 

 notablj- the Revenge, sixth from his rear, spread out 

 towards the enemy, and, sidling up, sought to cut 

 through their line. Few succeeded because their units 

 crowded up and in some cases prevented this last 

 manttuvre. 



In one other respect CoUingwood's achievemQjit was 

 not quite so thorough as Nelson had hoped. Whether 

 from a chivalrous desire to lessen the frightful burden 

 about to fall on his chief, or because he did not see the 

 three Spanish ships farther to leeward, or because his 

 fighting instincts bade him attack the Sanla Ana (120 

 guns), he made for that huge three-decker, the sixteenth 

 from the hostile rear. Consequently his fifteen had 

 to do, not with tweh-e, but with sixteen ships. More- 

 over, CoUingwood's advance and that of his next ships 

 was perpendicular ; and it is a miracle that they escaped 

 destruction. But British gunnerv' and bravery carried 

 the day there as at the centre. With the details of the 

 battle we are not here concerned. My object has been to 

 set forth the tactics of Nelson's approach, to explain it 

 by reference to the exigencies of the situation, and to 

 correct one or two errors that have crept into widely 

 accepted narratives of the battle. Above all, I wish to 

 refer readers of Discovkry to the Admiralty Memor- 

 andum on Trafalgar (Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1913, 

 2s. 3(/.), which gives the ships' logs and the other 

 essential evidence concerning the greatest of all naval 

 battles. 



Louis Pasteur 



December 27, 1S22 — September 2S, 1S9S 



The Discoverer of the True Origin of Fermentation 

 and Disease 



Is Pasteur we have the link between the scientist and 

 the doctor, between the laboratory and the factor}-. 

 The whole of his long life was devoted to the patient 

 study of natural phenomena with a view to the dis- 

 covery of their cause and the application of the know- 

 ledge so gained to the benefit of mankind. 



The son of humble parents, he spent his early years 

 at his father's tannery at Arbois, in the Jura, leaving 

 home at the age of sixteen to go to the Barbct Boarding 

 School in Paris. But here he became so homesick that 

 his father fetched him away and he continued his 

 studies at the college at Besan<;on. In 1842 he again 

 went off to Paris, this time to teach in the Barbet 

 Boarding School, at the same time attending Dumas' 

 lectures on chemistry at the Sorbonne. A year later 

 he entered the Ecole Normale, with which he was to be 

 associated more or less all his life. He was soon at 

 work in Balard's laboratory collaborating with Laurent. 

 His earliest researches were in the field of pure chemis- 

 try, known to-day as stereo-chemistry or the chemistrj- 

 of space. Mitscherlich had called attention to two 

 different kinds of tartaric acid, which could be distin- 

 guished in this way : one of them rotated the beam of 

 polarised hght, the other did not possess this curious 

 property ; but he had failed to give any reason for 

 this phenomenon. After much careful examination of 

 the crj'stals of tartaric acid, he noticed that they had 

 small hemihedral faces, and that some of these turned 

 to the right, others to the left. He set to work to pick 

 out the different kinds of crystal one by one, and found 

 that the left-handed crj'stals rotated the beam of light 

 to the left, and the right-handed to the right. Although 

 his work was being continually interrupted by one cause 

 or another, Pasteur always returned to his beloved 

 crystals, not being content till he found the lost inactive 

 acid of Mitscherlich, known as paratartaric or racemic 

 acid. Eventually he actually undertook a journey 

 right across Germany and into Austria in search of this 

 third kind of tartaric acid, which was said to have been 

 seen from time to time in the sediments of the wine 

 casks in those countries. His search was rewarded at 

 last, though he had to go right down to Trieste for it, 

 and in this way, among others, the foundations of the 

 chemistry of space were laid. 



His studies of the tartaric acids led him insensibly 

 to the study of fermentation, and opiwrtuncly he 

 was sent to the very centre of the French distiller\" 

 trade at Lille as Dean of the Faculte des Sciences in 

 that town. In the summer of 1S56, a Lille distiller, 

 M. Bigo, got into difficulties with the manufacture of 

 alcohol from beet, and came to Pasteur for aduce. 

 Following his invariable practice, Pasteur started by 

 performing experiments and making use of his micro- 

 scope. He soon noticed that the microscopic appearance 

 was very different when the fermentation was proceed- 

 ing properl\' from what it was when things began to go 

 wrong. 



Soon after this he returned to the Ecole Normale as 

 Administrator, and there he continued his studies of 

 alcoholic fermentation. It was not long before he 

 came to the conclusion that where there was fermenta- 



