GERMS. 293 



contained none to start with, it is useless to try and preserve it 

 in any other way than by keeping it at such a temperature or 

 soaked with such bodies as shall utterly destroy the plants as 

 fast as they are generated, neither of which conditions are pre- 

 sent in ordinary tinned meats. For these consist simply of boiled 

 meat in air-tight tins, which were sealed while at the boiling 

 temperature. Now there being no living bacteria in the meat, 

 it keeps so long as the tin remains closed and bacteria from out- 

 side prevented from coming in, which may be for twenty or 

 thirty or more years. The same object is obtained by the Esqui- 

 maux when they grind their beef up with spices and make 

 pemmican, the spices killing any bacteria that may be present 

 and preventing the presence of fresh ones. 



Of all men who have studied these white plants or bacteria, 

 the chief is Pasteur, a chemist by profession, who pursued his 

 studies even in youth with such ardour that on his marriage day 

 they had to send from the church, so it is reported, to remind 

 him of the event. Among his earlier works was the study of 

 yeast, the plant that causes fermentation in sugar, making alco- 

 hol. Pasteur first shewed that the formation of vinegar in wines 

 and beer was due to the uninvited presence of a second plant, 

 Mycoderma Aceti, which fed on the alcohol, turning it into 

 vinegar, and showed the reason for the necessity of absolute 

 purity of working if the brewers and wine merchants hoped to 

 obtain good fluids with any degree of certainty. 



From a study of the silk worms he showed the cause of the 

 disease which was ruining tens of thousands to be a bacterium, 

 and in one district alone, near Trieste, by following his instruc- 

 tions, the people were enabled to make a profit of 26,000,000 

 francs the very year after they had had an actual dead loss. 

 For this the Emperor nominated him a senator for life, but the 

 Franco-German "War breaking out soon after he was never 

 gazetted. 



Later he discovered a method for dealing with anthrax or wool- 

 sorters disease, by inoculating the cattle and sheep with a weak- 

 ened poison obtained by exposing the rod-shaped anthrax plant 

 at certain temperatures, and then being able practically to repeat 



