A THEORY OF FERMENTS AND THEIR ACTION. 
J. W. McLaughlin, M. D. 
The marvelous discoveries in science and the rapid advances along 
all lines of knowledge, which have been made in this age of wonderful 
progress, have inflicted upon suffering man an immense mass of printed 
matter, good, bad and worse — mostly worse — which in the main it 
would be sinful to call scientific and libelous to call literature. 
Whether I am unconsciously adding to this mass of rubbish in at- 
tempting to exploit a new theory of ferments and their action remains 
to be seen. To be frank, I must admit that I have seriously questioned 
the propriety, to say nothing of the wisdom, of submitting to this audi- 
ence a paper involving, as it does, new, perhaps untenable, concepts 
along lines of science. It will, of course, be no sufficient excuse, should 
you decide that my theory is wrong, to say that it is a result of long 
and patient investigation and but for this fact it would not have been 
read on this occasion. 
I was lead into a study of the phenomena of fermentation some thirty 
years ago by endeavoring to fathom the mysteries of therapeutic energy, 
and the means and methods which nature uses in protecting man from, 
and in some cases curing him of, certain infectious diseases. The 
marked resemblance, in morphologic characters and in biologic habit, 
which ferment micro-organisms bear to pathogenic micro-organisms, and 
the striking analogies in structure, in reactions, and in special activi- 
ties, that enzymes bear to toxins, impressed me with the thought that 
fermentation and infection, in their modus operandi, are identical, or 
nearly identical, processes. I, therefore, sought to learn the nature of 
ferments and how they act, in order to apply this knowledge to the 
elucidation of the nature of toxins and their action; but my investi- 
gations in the literature of fermentation did not extend far until it 
became plain to me that science knew no more of ferments than she 
did of toxins, and in order to interpret the analogies of the two pro- 
cesses, in the present state of our knowledge, theory must be recast 
along new lines. 
The phenomena and causes of fermentation have been interesting 
objects of study since early times — centuries ago — and it is, therefore, 
impossible, in a brief paper, to present in historical review the leading 
facts which have been acquired, and discuss in detail even the most 
prominent theories of fermentation which have lived, flourished for a 
brief time, and died, during this period. 
