THE HISTORY OF BACTERIOLOGY. 71 



workers from amongst his contemporaries. On the other 

 hand, however, he brought forward those who were by their 

 researches led in opposite directions, or who, with less perfect 

 methods, could not make their facts fit in with his theory, 

 or who could not repeat or confirm his experiments. 



The most important point that he wished to demonstrate 

 was th^t which related to the specific character of the various 

 ferments in fruit juices. He was attacked most vigorously 

 on this subject by Lemaire, Bechamp, Hoffmann, and others, 

 each of whom pointed out that in any fermentation experi- 

 ments that he had made he had never seen a single organism 

 only. (He had, in fact, never been working with pure cultiva- 

 tions). This was undoubtedly a very forcible objection, and one 

 which had to be met, but one which was easily enough over- 

 come as methods of separation and isolation became perfected. 

 Bechamp, who had found what he termed granules in the 

 cells of living plants and animals, and even in fossil remains, 

 held that these microzymas, as he called them, remained 

 alive ; that they set up various forms of fermentation ; that 

 under different conditions of food, separation from the cell, 

 and external influences generally, they ran together, became 

 altered in shape, and underwent various changes, so giving 

 rise to the various forms which Pasteur had described ; all 

 these processes going on concurrently or subsequently to the 

 various changes that occurred in fermentative and pathogenic 

 processes. He would, however, have nothing to do with any 

 specific organism ; he considered that all organisms were 

 merely the result of a new grouping and alteration of these 

 microzymas separated from the cells, and that they were 

 specifically affected by the various altered conditions in which 

 they found themselves when removed from the cell in which 

 they naturally occur. Both Pasteur's positions were thus 

 attacked. His first contention was that germs were the 

 cause of fermentation in disease, and secondly, that each 

 fermentation was due to the specific action of a definite 

 organism. In his first contention his position was materi- 

 ally strengthened by the observations of Lemaire who, after 

 proving that the presence of carbolic acid was inimical to 

 the life of the higher animals and plants, carried his re- 

 searches a step further, and proved that the lower organ- 

 isms were similarly affected by the same material, and he 

 found that the addition of a small quantity of carbolic acid 



