48 
the science, the nearest approach to them being the use of the terms 
Sauerstofferreger and Sauer stofftrager employed in the later writings 
of Schoenbein, and the recognition of the fact by this author that the 
power to activate oxygen and hydrogen peroxide is more or less 
intimately associated with the zymotic activity of the unorganized 
ferments and with vital phenomena generally. He accounted for all 
of these phenomena on the supposition that by means of various sub- 
stances and under various influences the oxygen of the air becomes 
ozonized. 
In the meantime other chemists and physicists (see Soret ( 405 ) , An- 
drews and Tait( 12 ), Brodie( 102 ), Odling ( 313 )) had gradually come to 
distinguish more clearly between the three forms of oxygen, viz, 
ordinary oxygen 0 2 , ozone 0 3 , and active (atomic) oxygen, O 
(antozone). The result has been that Schoenbein’s original views 
regarding the manner in which the Sauer stoff err egern and Sauerstoff- 
trdgern effect the activation of ordinary atmospheric oxygen, and the 
transfer of oxygen to other less readily oxidizable substances thereby, 
have been considerably modified and our knowledge of what we know 
as the oxidizing ferments considerably extended. 
OXIDIZING FERMENTS (“ VERWESUNGSFERMENTE ” AND “ OXYDATIONS- 
FERMENTE,” Traube ). 
During the second period of the development of this subject our 
knowledge of processes of slow oxidation and oxygen-activation, as 
well as of fermentation in general, was considerably extended through 
the labors of Moritz Traube. It remained for Traube to introduce 
into the science the term “ oxidizing ferment” ( Oxydationsferment ) as 
a generic term for the unstable Sauerstofferreger and Sauer stofftrager of 
Schoenbein, which were found by Planche and Schoenbein to be so 
widely distributed among plants and animals. 
In 1858 Traube ( 425 ) gave to the world his “Theory of Fermenta- 
tion” (Theorie der Fermentwirkungen, von Moritz Traube, Berlin, 
Ferd. Dummlers Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1858). A brief outline of this 
theory is also given in a paper published in Poggendorf’s Annalen ( 426 ), 
and later he developed his ideas in a series of articles in the Berichte 
der Deutschen Chemischen Gesellschaft. In paragraph 175, page 61, 
of Traube’s “Theorie” it is stated that an essential distinction be- 
tween putrefactive and vital ferments — that is, those present in the 
living organism — does not appear to exist. 
In this treatise and in his later papers he developed the idea that the 
ferments are not bodies in a state of decomposition which impart 
decomposition to other substances, as had been supposed by Liebig, 
but are, in all probability, chemical compounds originating from pro- 
teids which, while not as yet isolated in pure condition, have, without 
