THE YEAST CELL AND ITS LESSONS 1 



BY W. STANLEY SMITH 



IT has often struck me that the debt modern science owes 

 to that simple organism we call the yeast cell has, perhaps, 

 never been sufficiently considered by the majority of well- 

 educated mankind. It may be that in the haste and turmoil 

 of industrial life many details of considerable fascination 

 must necessarily escape our ken; it may be, alas! that 

 some of us are content to live our lives among phenomena 

 of which, as Sir Oliver Lodge once said, "we care nothing 

 and know less. ' ' Be this as it may, I venture to think that 

 an odd half-hour spent in those delightful fields of thought 

 which envelop yeast and its simple cellular life will not 

 prove entirely unpleasurable, nor, indeed, without some 

 measure of intellectual profit. 



I do not purpose to delve far back into the dusty records 

 of time. It will suffice for our purpose if we place our- 

 selves beside the old Dutchman, Van Leeuwenhoeck, and 

 take a glance through the early microscope of 1680. In 

 the field of vision many globules floating in a fluid will be 

 discerned; and these, forsooth, are yeast cells seen in their 

 naked simplicity for the first time by mortal eye. It was 

 thus found that brewers' barm possessed a definite struc- 

 ture, and the primitive step in a long series of discoveries 

 July accomplished; but it is curious to reflect that 150 

 years should then intervene during which nothing of cap- 

 ital importance was added to our knowledge. With the 

 advent of the nineteenth century, however, each day 

 brought forth its measure of scientific progress. The scene, 

 indeed, became crowded; men flocked hither and thither 



'Published in Knowledge and Scientific News and reprinted in 

 Scientific American Supplement, August 14, 1909. 



