138 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE BACTERIA. 



ify at all the action of soluble ferments. Accord- 

 ing to Dumas, borax has, on the contrary, the 

 property of entirely destroying the activity of 

 soluble ferments without absolutely preventing 

 certain true fermentations, — for example, the al- 

 coholic fermentation of glucose. We will see fur- 

 ther on that this property of borax has been 

 utilized in the treatment of catarrh of the blad- 

 der and of certain virulent affections. 



Although at first view these two groups of phe- 

 nomena seem very different, they may, however, 

 be compared the one with the other. Without 

 speaking of the ammoniacal fermentation of urine, 

 which, as we shall shortly see, may be arranged in 

 either of these groups, we may admit that the only 

 difference between these two series of chemical 

 modifications consists in the fact that in one case 

 the true fermentations being the last term in the 

 interior nutrition of the cell have their seat in 

 the interior of the cell itself ; while in the other 

 the first terms of nutrition are always extra-cellu- 

 lar phenomena, having for effect, as CI. Bernard 

 has shown, to render assimilable or diffusible in the 

 interior of the organism the aliment necessary to 

 the development of every organized being (trans- 

 formation of starch into glucose, of sugar into 

 glucose, emulsion of fats, liquefaction of albumi- 

 noid substances). 



The study, from a chemical point of view, of 

 these phenomena of nutrition, of these fermenta- 

 tions, since such is their name, has not yet made 

 much progress, and it would be difficult to make a 

 rational classification of them in the present state 



