86 



DE. BASTIAN ON THE 



chemical' ferments is at present almost better substantiated than 

 that of the living organisms by which they may have been formed. 

 By means of boiling alcohol and other agents these bodies can be 

 isolated and freed from living impurity. It is, however, much more 

 difficult entirely to separate minute living organisms from their 

 media*, and consequently more difficult to be perfectly certain in 

 regard to their potencies. It is, However, on account of the deri- 

 vation of the chemical ferments from the living units, and because 

 of the presence of these latter bodies in all fermenting mixtures, 

 that their own agency is still regarded by many as essential to the 

 initiation of ordinary fermentations. But, as I have already 

 indicated, we much need further information as to the precise mode 

 in which fermentation is initiated and carried on by soluble fer- 

 ments like that which M. Musculus discovered in and sepa- 

 rated from urine. If they (^11 or any of them) are capable of 

 setting up fermentations in germless fluids in the course of wMch 

 organisms appear, such phenomena would most efiectually dis- 

 prove an exclusive germ theory. 



Turning now to the process of zymosis, we find the available 

 generative conditions altogether different. Here we have to do 

 not with fluids only, but with tissues and organs composed of 

 living elements characterized by all kinds and degrees of activity. 

 Some of them produce the various soluble ferments of the body, 

 some may produce poisons, and others habitually lead to the forma- 

 tion of pigment-granules — vital acts severally similar in kind to 

 those which the common ferment-organisms are known to mani- 

 fest. Tissue-elements without number having such and multi- 

 tudes of other properties are therefore ever present, capable 

 under certain Influences of being more or less easily diverted into 

 unhealthy modes of action, so that many of them may become true 

 living ferments in the modern sense of that termf, and therefore 

 possible producers of chemical ferments (contagia) capable of 



* The more efEcient means of filtering organisms from their media, which we 

 now possess, by means of porous earthenware, ought to be useful in this direc- 

 tion. Such organisms and their germs might be subsequently washed with several 

 distilled waters, just as a chemist would wash a delicate precipitate. It would 

 be strange, indeed, if this very mild usage interfered with the properties of organ- 

 isms which at other times are credited with such remarkable powers of endurance. 



t How legitimate this statement is may be. seen from what M. Pasteur himself 

 s^ys. These are his most' mature views : — "I have been gradually led to look 

 upon fermentation as a riecessary consequence of the manifestation of life, when 

 that life takes place without the direct combustion due to free oxygen. . , . We 



