532 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



swaddling bands of the past. It is now in danger of being 

 stupefied by the one, or strangled by the other. I look, 

 however, forward to a time when the strength, insight, 

 and elevation which now visit us in mere hints and 

 glimpses, during moments " of clearness and vigor," shall 

 be the stable and permanent possession of purer and 

 mightier minds than ours purer and mightier, partly 

 because of their deeper knowledge of matter and their 

 more faithful conformity to its laws. 



CHAPTER XXXIV. 



FERMENTATION, AND ITS BEARINGS ON SURGERY AND 

 MEDICINE.* 



ONE OF the most remarkable characteristics of the age 

 in which we live, is its desire and tendency to connect 

 itself organically with preceding ages to ascertain how 

 the state of things that now is came to be what it is. And 

 the more earnestly and profoundly this problem is studied, 

 the more clearly comes into view the vast and varied debt 

 which the world of to-day owes to that fore- world, in 

 which man by skill, valor, and well-directed strength first 

 replenished and subdued the earth. Our prehistoric 

 fathers may have been savages, but they were clever ind 

 observant ones. They founded agriculture by the dis- 

 covery and development of seeds whose origin is now un- 

 known. They tamed and harnessed their animal antag- 

 onists, and sent them down to us as ministers, instead of 

 rivals in the fight for life. Later on, when the claims of 

 luxury added themselves to those of necessity, we find the 

 same spirit of invention at work. We have no historic 

 account of the first brewer, but we glean from history that 

 his art was practiced, and its produce relished, more than 

 two thousand years ago. Theophrastus, who was born 

 nearly four hundred years before Christ, described beer as 

 the wine of barley. It is extremely difficult to preserve 

 beer in a hot country, still Egypt was the land in which it 

 was first brewed, the desire of man to quench his thirst 



* A Discourse delivered before the Glasgow Science Lectures 

 Association, October 19, 1876, 



