YEAST CELL AND ITS LESSONS 171 



with his purely chemical theory, or, yet again, the strange 

 forecast of Colin and Kaemtz, who deem the whole matter 

 wrapped deep in the mysteries of electricity. Suffice it 

 we have chosen enough for our wants, and it will be appar- 

 ent how, in the whirligig of time, forgotten lore will suffer 

 resurrection. In the history of science instances are, 

 indeed, not wanting in which old theory clothed in the garb 

 of newly-found facts itself lives anew. 



The learned Gabriel Schwann was, by inclination, a 

 physiologist, and his work on yeast must be regarded in 

 the light of experimental means to an ambitious end. He 

 sought in the cell the very foundation of life. "I have 

 been unable," says he, "to avoid mentioning fermentation, 

 because it is the most fully and exactly known operation 

 of cells, and represents in the simplest fashion the process 

 which is repeated by every cell of the living body." Let 

 us place these words side by side with those uttered but 

 the other day by the great Verworr. "It is the cell to 

 which the consideration of every bodily function, sooner 

 or later, drives us. In the muscle-cell lies the riddle of the 

 heartbeat, or of muscular contraction; in the epithelial- 

 cell, in the white blood cell, lies the problem of the absorp- 

 tion of food; in the gland-cell are the causes of secretion, 

 and the secrets of the mind are slumbering in the ganglion- 

 cell." It thus appears clear that the simple saccharomy- 

 cete is typical, even as Schwann argued, of all organized 

 life. But it is not a mere question of crude morphology ; 

 this, indeed, is but the least subtle of those analogies which 

 the study of a yeast cell will suggest. As we gaze through 

 the eyepiece of some sufficient microscope or better still 

 observe the seething world of the brewers' fermenting vat, 

 we may be tempted to ask the old, old question, Whence 

 and Whither? What lies behind this fierce energy of 

 decomposition, this astounding fecundity, this altogether 

 absorbing mystery of life? These are the problems which 

 men of science have set themselves to solve, and already 

 they have gone far. I think that it would not be difficult 



