CONDITIONS FAVOUEINO FERMENTATION. 



61 



yill. General Interpretation : present State of the Question in 

 regard to ArcJiehiosis. 



The germ theory of fermentation was adopted by M. Pasteur 

 and the doctrine of" spontaneous generation " was rejected, in 

 his celebrated memoir of 1862, on the strength of three principal 

 inductions from his experimental work, together with three corol- 

 laries severally deduced therefrom. 



Arranged in order, they may be stated as follows : — 



Liduction I. All guarded acid fluids remain barren after boiling. 



Corollary. — Bacteria, Vibriones, Torulae, and their germs are killed when 

 they are heated in acid fluids for two or three minutes to a temperature 

 of 100° C. 



Induction II. Some neutral or faintly alkaline fluids, even though they are 

 securely guarded, will ferment after boiling. 



Corollary. — Certain Bacteria- or Vibrio-germs are not killed by being 

 heated for two or three minutes in fluids to a temperature of 100° C, 

 when these fluids have a neutral or faintly alkaline reaction. 

 Induction III. All neutral or faintly alkaline guarded fluids remain barren 

 after they have been heated for a few minutes to 110° C. (230° F.). 



Corollary, — All Bacteria- and Vibrio-germs are killed, even in neutral or 

 faintly alkaline fluids, when these are raised for a few minutes to a tem- 

 perature of 110° C. 



These were the inductions and inferences to which the Presi- 

 dent of the British Association in 1870 gave his uuqualified sup- 

 port, since it was in reliance upon Pasteur's views and researches 

 principally that he proclaimed from his Presidential Chair the 

 doctrine omne vivum ex vivo to be " victorious along the whole 

 line/' 



If this could be said to have been an impartial verdict in 1870, 

 it is one which, is not likely to be repeated in 1880 on similar 

 grounds*. Since the same year (1870) I have on various occasions 

 and on various evidence contended that the first and third of these 

 inductions were not good, and that the second corollary was neither 

 warranted nor true. Additional and final proof of these positions 

 has, I venture to think, been supplied in this memoir. 1 claim, 

 therefore, to have shown that the grounds on which M. Pasteur, 

 and the scientific world in general, following him, had accepted 



* Whilst this is passing through the press No. 182 of the ' Proceedings of the 

 Royal Society ' has come to hand ; and therein (at p. 353) I find a quotation 

 from a recent lecture by Prof. Burdon Sanderson, in which he already ac- 

 knowledges that,— " The outer line of defence represented by the aphoristic ex- 

 pression owiwe vivnmex ovo, has been for some time abandoned." 



