STUDIES ON FERMENTATION. 45 



them, the product of a special ferment, and that both medicid 

 and surgical professors of therapeutics should make it their 

 study to prevent exterior ferments from penetrating into the 

 liquids of our economy, or in the event of these ferments 

 having found their way into the system, to discover antiferments 

 for their destruction, without effecting any change in the 

 vitality of the histological elements of the liquid or tissues. 



There is no doubt that extreme caution must be exercised in 

 dealing with questions of this kind, as M. Sedillot has autho- 

 ritatively remarked ; but at the same time it cannot be denied 

 that the more such questions are discussed with exactness, the 

 more those celebrated practitioners who originated them are 

 confirmed in the ideas which first guided them. We may give 

 another example of this. 



In 1874, in consequence of a communication addressed to the 

 Academy of Sciences by Messrs Gosselin and A. Robin, on the 

 subject of ammoniacal urine, we made the observation that we 

 should endeavour to ascertain if, in all such cases, the urinary 

 fluids were not rendered ammoniacal by the presence of the 

 little ferment of the urea, which we have previously noticed,* 

 and which has since then been discussed with remarkable in- 

 telligence by M. Van Tieghem, in the thesis which he main- 

 tained for his doctor's degree. The suggestion and the 

 considerations that justified it led to a discussion before the 

 Academy of Medicine, in which contrary opinions were main- 

 tained. We lost no time in submitting these to the test of facts. 

 We could not find a single person suffering from ammoniacal 

 urine, in whose case the little ferment which we mentioned was 

 not to be detected. Our predictions were thus completely justified. 



As early as 1864 the Gazette Hehdomadaire de Medecine et de 

 Chirurgie published an account of urine made ammoniacal in 

 the bladder, the author of which, Dr. Traube, makes the follow- 

 ing observations : — " It was believed that, in consequence of the 



* See Pasteur, Me moire sur Its Generations elites Spontanees, pp. 51 and 

 52, 1862. 



