Alfred Rochefort - "Healthful Sports for Boys"

J. Wilbur Chapman - "The Personal Touch"

Unknown - "The First 100,000 Prime Numbers"

Pedro Calderon de la Barca - "The Purgatory of St. Patrick"

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PHILADELPHIA, Pa. -- The Philadelphia literary world will celebrate the launch of two new players today, April 10th: Kay Square Press, a new publishing company focused on Philadelphia-area artists, their stories, and their art; and Kay Square's first release, 'With the Rich and Mighty: Emlen Etting of Philadelphia' (ISBN: 978-0-9815129-0-7), a critical biography by Kenneth C. Kaleta.

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Books: The Harvard Classics Volume 38

V >> Various >> The Harvard Classics Volume 38




M. Paul Bert, in his remarkable studies on the influence of
barometric pressure on the phenomena of life, has recognized the
fact that compressed oxygen is fatal to certain ferments, whilst
under similar conditions it does not interfere with the action of
those substances classed under the name of SOLUBLE FERMENTS, such
as diastase (the ferment which inverts cane sugar) emulsin and
others. During their stay in compressed air, ferments proper
ceased their activity, nor did they resume it, even after
exposure to air at ordinary pressures, provided the access of
germs was prevented.

We now come to Liebig's principal objection, with which he
concludes his ingenious argument, and to which no less than eight
or nine pages of the Annales are devoted.

Our author takes up the question of the possibility of causing
yeast to grow in sweetened water, to which a salt of ammonia and
some yeast-ash have been added--a fact which is evidently
incompatible with his theory that a ferment is always an
albuminous substance on its way to decomposition. In this case
the albuminous substance does not exist; we have only the mineral
substances which will serve to produce it. We know that Liebig
regarded yeast, and, generally speaking, any ferment whatever, as
being a nitrogenous, albuminous substance which, in the same way
as emulsin, for example, possesses the power of bringing about
certain chemical decompositions. He connected fermentation with
the easy decomposition of that albuminous substance, and imagined
that the phenomenon occurred in the following manner: "The
albuminous substance on its way to decomposition possesses the
power of communicating to certain other bodies that same state of
mobility by which its own atoms are already affected; and through
its contact with other bodies it imparts to them the power of
decomposing or of entering into other combinations." Here Liebig
failed to perceive that the ferment, in its capacity of a living
organism, had anything to do with the fermentation.

This theory dates back as far as 1843. In 1846 Messrs. Boutron
and Fremy, in a Memoir on lactic fermentation, published in the
Annales de Chimie et de Physique, strained the conclusions
deducible from it to a most unjustifiable extent. They asserted
that one and the same nitrogenous substance might undergo various
modifications in contact with air, so as to become successively
alcoholic, lactic, butyric, and other ferments. There is nothing
more convenient than purely hypothetical theories, theories which
are not the necessary consequences of facts; when fresh facts
which cannot be reconciled with the original hypothesis are
discovered, new hypotheses can be tacked on to the old ones. This
is exactly what Liebig and Fremy have done, each in his turn,
under the pressure of our studies, commenced in 1857. In 1864
Fremy devised the theory of hemi-organism, which meant nothing
more than that he gave up Liebig's theory of 1843, together with
the additions which Boutron and he had made to it in 1846; in
other words, he abandoned the idea of albuminous substances being
ferments, to take up another idea, that albuminous substances in
contact with air are peculiarly adapted to undergo organization
into new beings--that is, the living ferments which we had
discovered--and that the ferments of beer and of the grape have a
common origin.

This theory of hemi-organism was word for word the antiquated
opinion of Turpin. * * * The public, especially a certain section
of the public did not go very deeply into an examination of the
subject. It was the period when the doctrine of spontaneous
generation was being discussed with much warmth. The new word
hemi-organism, which was the only novelty in M. Fremy's theory,
deceived people. It was thought that M. Fremy had really
discovered the solution of the question of the day. It is true
that it was rather difficult to understand the process by which
an albuminous substance could become all at once a living and
budding cell. This difficulty was solved by M. Fremy, who
declared that it was the result of some power that was not yet
understood, the power of "organic impulse." [Footnote: FREMY,
Comptes rendus de l'Academie, vol. lviii., p. 1065, 1864.]

Liebig, who, as well as M. Fremy, was compelled to renounce his
original opinions concerning the nature of ferments, devised the
following obscure theory (Memoir by Liebig, 1870, already cited):

"There seems to be no doubt as to the part which the vegetable
organism plays in the phenomenon of fermentation. It is through
it alone that an albuminous substance and sugar are enabled to
unite and form this particular combination, this unstable form
under which alone, as a component part of the mycoderm, they
manifest an action on sugar. Should the mycoderm cease to grow,
the bond which unites the constituent parts of the cellular
contents is loosened, and it is through the motion produced
therein that the cells of yeast bring about a disarrangement or
separation of the elements of the sugar into molecules."

One might easily believe that the translator for the Annales has
made some mistake, so great is the obscurity of this passage.

Whether we take this new form of the theory or the old one,
neither can be reconciled at all with the development of yeast
and fermentation in a saccharine mineral medium, for in the
latter experiment fermentation is correlative to the life of the
ferment and to its nutrition, a constant change going on between
the ferment and its food-matters, since all the carbon
assimilated by the ferment is derived from sugar, its nitrogen
from ammonia and phosphorus from the phosphates in solution. And
even all said, what purpose can be served by the gratuitous
hypothesis of contact-action or communicated motion? The
experiment of which we are speaking is thus a fundamental one;
indeed, it is its possibility that constitutes the most effective
point in the controversy. No doubt Liebig might say, "but it is
the motion of life and of nutrition which constitutes your
experiment, and this is the communicated motion that my theory
requires." Curiously enough, Liebig does endeavour, as a matter
of fact, to say this, but he does so timidly and incidentally:
"From a chemical point of view, which point of view I would not
willingly abandon, a VITAL ACTION is a phenomenon of motion, and,
in this double sense of LIFE M. Pasteur's theory agrees with my
own, and is not in contradiction with it (page 6)." This is true.
Elsewhere Liebig says:

"It is possible that the only correlation between the
physiological act and the phenomenon of fermentation is the
production, in the living cell, of the substance which, by some
special property analogous to that by which emulsin exerts a
decomposing action on salicin and amygdalin, may bring about the
decomposition of sugar into other organic molecules; the
physiological act, in this view, would be necessary for the
production of this substance, but would have nothing else to do
with the fermentation (page 10)." To this, again, we have no
objection to raise.

Liebig, however, does not dwell upon these considerations, which
he merely notices in passing, because he is well aware that, as
far as the defence of his theory is concerned, they would be mere
evasions. If he had insisted on them, or based his opposition
solely upon them, our answer would have been simply this: "If you
do not admit with us that fermentation is correlated with the
life and nutrition of the ferment, we agree upon the principal
point. So agreeing, let us examine, if you will, the actual cause
of fermentation;--this is a second question, quite distinct from
the first. Science is built up of successive solutions given to
questions of ever increasing subtlety, approaching nearer and
nearer towards the very essence of phenomena. If we proceed to
discuss together the question of how living, organized beings act
in decomposing fermentable substances, we will be found to fall
out once more on your hypothesis of communicated motion, since
according to our ideas, the actual cause of fermentation is to be
sought, in most cases, in the fact of life without air, which is
the characteristic of many ferments."

Let us briefly see what Liebig thinks of the experiment in which
fermentation is produced by the impregnation of a saccharine
mineral medium, a result so greatly at variance with his mode of
viewing the question. [Footnote: See our Memoir of 1860 (Annales
de Chimie et de Physique, vol. lviii, p. 61, and following,
especially pp. 69 and 70, where the details of the experiment
will be found).] After deep consideration he pronounces this
experiment to be inexact, and the result ill-founded. Liebig,
however, was not one to reject a fact without grave reasons for
doing so, or with the sole object of evading a troublesome
discussion. "I have repeated this experiment," he says, "a great
number of times, with the greatest possible care, and have
obtained the same results as M. Pasteur, excepting as regards the
formation and increase of the ferment." It was, however, the
formation and increase of the ferment that constituted the point
of the experiment. Our discussion was, therefore, distinctly
limited to this: Liebig denied that the ferment was capable of
development in a saccharine mineral medium, whilst we asserted
that this development did actually take place, and was
comparatively easy to prove. In 1871 we replied to M. Liebig
before the Paris Academy of Sciences in a Note, in which we
offered to prepare in a mineral medium, in the presence of a
commission to be chosen for the purpose, as great a weight of
ferment as Liebig could reasonably demand. [Footnote: PASTEUR,
Comptes rendus de l'Academie des Sciences, vol. lxxiii., p. 1419.
1871.] We were bolder than we should, perhaps, have been in 1860;
the reason was that our knowledge of the subject had been
strengthened by ten years of renewed research. Liebig did not
accept our proposal, nor did he even reply to our Note. Up to the
time of his death, which took place on April 18th, 1873, he wrote
nothing more on the subject. [Footnote: In his Memoir of 1870,
Liebig made a remarkable admission: "My late friend Pelouze," he
says, "had communicated to me nine years ago certain results of
M. Pasteur's researches on fermentation. I told him that just
then I was not disposed to alter my opinion on the cause of
fermentation, and that if it were possible, by means of ammonia,
to produce or multiply the yeast in fermenting liquors, industry
would soon avail itself of the fact, and that I would wait to see
if it did so; up to the present time, however, there had not been
the least change in the manufacture of yeast. "We do not know
what M. Pelouze's reply was; but it is not difficult to conceive
so sagacious an observer remarking to his illustrious friend that
the possibility of deriving pecuniary advantage from the wide
application of a new scientific fact had never been regarded as
the criterion of the exactness of that fact. We could prove,
moreover, by the undoubted testimony of very distinguished
practical men, notably by that of M. Pezeyre, director of
distilleries, that upon this point also Liebig was mistaken.]

When we published, in 1860, the details of the experiment in
question, we pointed out at some length the difficulties of
conducting it successfully, and the possible causes of failure.
We called attention particularly to the fact that saccharine
mineral media are much more suited for the nutrition of bacteria,
lactic ferment, and other lowly forms, than they are to that of
yeast, and in consequence readily become filled with various
organisms from the spontaneous growth of germs derived from the
particles of dust floating in the atmosphere. The reason why we
do not observe the growth of alcoholic ferments, especially at
the commencement of the experiments, is because of the
unsuitableness of those media for the life of yeast. The latter
may, nevertheless, form in them subsequent to this development of
other organized forms, by reason of the modification produced in
the original mineral medium by the albuminous matters that they
introduce into it. It is interesting to peruse, in our Memoir of
1860, certain facts of the same kind relating to fermentation by
means of albumens--that of the blood for example, from which, we
may mention incidentally, we were led to infer the existence of
several distinct albumens in the serum, a conclusion which, since
then, has been confirmed by various observers, notably by M.
Bechamp. Now, in his experiments on fermentation in sweetened
water, with yeast-ash and a salt of ammonia, there is no doubt
that Liebig had failed to avoid those difficulties which are
entailed by the spontaneous growth of other organisms than yeast.
Moreover, it is possible that, to have established the certainty
of this result, Liebig should have had recourse to a closer
microscopical observation than from certain passages in his
Memoir he seems to have adopted. We have little doubt that his
pupils could tell us that Liebig did not even employ that
instrument without which any exact study of fermentation is not
merely difficult but well-nigh impossible. We ourselves, for the
reasons, mentioned, did not obtain a simple alcoholic
fermentation any more than Liebig did. In that particular
experiment, the details of which we gave in our Memoir of 1860,
we obtained lactic and alcoholic fermentation together; an
appreciable quantity of lactic acid formed and arrested the
propagation of the lactic and alcoholic ferments, so that more
than half of the sugar remained in the liquid without fermenting.
This, however, in no way detracted from the correctness of the
conclusion which we deduced from the experiment, and from other
similar ones; it might even be said that, from a general and
philosophical point of view--which is the only one of interest
here--the result was doubly satisfactory, inasmuch as we
demonstrated that mineral media were adapted to the simultaneous
development of several organized ferments instead of only one.
The fortuitous association of different ferments could not
invalidate the conclusion that all the nitrogen of the cells of
the alcoholic and lactic ferments was derived from the nitrogen
in the ammoniacal salts, and that all the carbon of those
ferments was taken from the sugar, since, in the medium employed
in our experiment, the sugar was the only substance that
contained carbon. Liebig carefully abstained from noticing this
fact, which would have been fatal to the very groundwork of his
criticisms, and thought that he was keeping up the appearance of
a grave contradiction by arguing that we had never obtained a
simple alcoholic fermentation. It would be unprofitable to dwell
longer upon the subject of the difficulties which the propagation
of yeast in a saccharine mineral medium formerly presented. As a
matter of fact, the progress of our studies has imparted to the
question an aspect very different from that which it formerly
wore; it was this circumstance which emboldened us to offer, in
our reply to Liebig before the Academy of Sciences in 1871, to
prepare, in a saccharine mineral medium, in the presence of a
commission to be appointed by our opponent, any quantity of
ferment that he might require, and to effect the fermentation of
any weight of sugar whatsoever.

Our knowledge of the facts detailed in the preceding chapter
concerning pure ferments, and their manipulation in the presence
of pure air, enables us completely to disregard those causes of
embarrassment that result from the fortuitous occurrence of the
germs of organisms different in character from the ferments
introduced by the air or from the sides of vessels, or even by
the ferment itself.

Let us once more take one of our double-necked flasks, which we
will suppose is capable of containing three or four litres (six
to eight pints).

Let us put into it the following:

Pure distilled water.
Sugar candy. ... . ... . ... . ... . ... . 200 grammes
Bitartrate of potassium. ... . ... . 1.0 grammes
Bitartrate of ammonia. ... . ... ... 0.5 grammes
Sulphate of ammonia.,. ... . ... ... 1.5 grammes
Ash of yeast. ... . ... . ... . ... . ... 1.5 grammes
(1 gramme = 15.43 grains)

Let us boil the mixture, to destroy all germs of organisms that
may exist in the air or liquid or on the sides of the flask, and
then permit it to cool, after having placed, by way of extra
precaution a small quantity of asbestos in the end of the fine
curved tube. Let us next introduce a trace of ferment into the
liquid, through the other neck, which, as we have described, is
terminated by a small piece of india-rubber tube closed with a
glass stopper.

Here are the details of such an experiment:--

On December 9th, 1873, we sowed some pure ferment--saccharomyces
pastorianus. From December 11, that is, within so short a time as
forty-eight hours after impregnation, we saw a multitude of
extremely minute bubbles rising almost continuously from the
bottom, indication that at this point the fermentation had
commenced. On the following days, several patches of froth
appeared on the surface of the liquid. We left the flask
undisturbed in the oven, at a temperature of 25 degrees C. (77
degrees F.) On April 24, 1874, we tested some of the liquid,
obtained by means of the straight tube, to see if it still
contained any sugar. We found that it contained less than two
grammes, so that 198 grammes (4.2 oz. Troy) had already
disappeared. Some time afterwards the fermentation came to an
end; we carried on the experiment, nevertheless, until April 18,
1875.

There was no development of any organism absolutely foreign to
the ferment, which was itself abundant, a circumstance that,
added to the persistent vitality of the ferment, in spite of the
unsuitableness of the medium for its nutrition, permitted the
perfect completion of fermentation. There was not the minutest
quantity of sugar remaining. The total weight of ferment, after
washing and drying at 100 degrees C. (212 degrees F.), was 2.563
grammes (39.5 grains).

In experiments of this kind, in which the ferment has to be
weighed, it is better not to use any yeast-ash that cannot be
dissolved completely, so as to be capable of easy separation from
the ferment formed. Raulin's liquid [Footnote: M. Jules Raulin
has published a well-known and remarkable work on the discovery
of the mineral medium best adapted by its composition to the life
of certain fungoid growth; he has given a formula for the
composition of such a medium. It is this that we call here
"Raulin's liquid" for abbreviation.

Water . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,500
Sugar candy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
Tartaric acid . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Nitrate of ammonia . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Phosphate of ammonia . . . . . . . . . . 0.6
Carbonate of potassium . . . . . . . . . 0.6
Carbonate of magnesia . . . . . . . . . . 0.4
Sulphate of ammonia . . . . . . . . . . . 0.25
Sulphate of zinc . . . . . . . . . . . . 0.07
Sulphate of iron . . . . . . . . . . . . 0.07
Silicate of potassium . . . . . . . . . . 0.07
--J. Raulin, Paris, Victor Masson, 1870. These pour le
doctorat.] may be used in such cases with success.

All the alcoholic ferments are not capable to the same extent of
development by means of phosphates, ammoniacal salts, and sugar.
There are some whose development is arrested a longer or shorter
time before the transformation of all the sugar. In a series of
comparative experiments, 200 grammes of sugar-candy being used in
each case, we found that whilst saccharomyces pastorianus
effected a complete fermentation of the sugar, the caseous
ferment did not decompose more than two-thirds, and the ferment
we have designated NEW "HIGH" FERMENT not more than one-fifth:
and keeping the flasks for a longer time in the oven had no
effect in increasing the proportions of sugar fermented in these
two last cases.

We conducted a great number of fermentations in mineral media, in
consequence of a circumstance which it may be interesting to
mention here. A person who was working in our laboratory asserted
that the success of our experiments depended upon the impurity of
the sugar-candy which we employed, and that if this sugar had
been pure--much purer than was the ordinary, white, commercial
sugar-candy, which up to that time we had always used--the
ferment could not have multiplied. The persistent objections of
our friend, and our desire to convince him, caused us to repeat
all our previous experiments on the subject, using sugar of great
purity, which had been specially prepared for us, with the utmost
care, by a skilful confectioner, Seugnot. The result only
confirmed our former conclusions. Even this did not satisfy our
obstinate friend, who went to the trouble of preparing some pure
sugar for himself, in little crystals, by repeated
crystallizations of carefully selected commercial sugar-candy; he
then repeated our experiments himself. This time his doubts were
overcome. It even happened that the fermentations with the
perfectly pure sugar instead of being slow were very active, when
compared with those which we had conducted with, the commercial
sugar-candy.




We may here add a few words on the non-transformation of yeast
into penicillium glaucum.

If at any time during fermentation we pour off the fermenting
liquid, the deposit of yeast remaining in the vessel may continue
there, in contact with air, without our ever being able to
discover the least formation of penicillium glaucum in it. We may
keep a current of pure air constantly passing through the flask;
the experiment will give the same result. Nevertheless, this is a
medium peculiarly adapted to the development of this mould,
inasmuch as if we were to introduce merely a few spores of
penicillium an abundant vegetation of that growth will afterwards
appear on the deposit. The descriptions of Messrs. Turpin,
Hoffmann, and Trecul have, therefore, been based on one of these
illusions which we meet with so frequently in microscopical
observations.

When we laid these facts before the Academy, [Footnote: PASTEUR,
Comptes rendus de l'Academie, vol. lxxviii., pp. 213-216.] M.
Trecul professed his inability to comprehend them: [Footnote:
TRECUL, Comptes rendus de l'Academie, vol. lxxviii., pp. 217,
218.] "According to M. Pasteur," he said, "the yeast of beer is
ANAEROBIAN, that is to say, it lives in a liquid deprived of free
oxygen; and to become mycoderma or penicillium it is above all
things necessary that it should be placed in air, since, without
this, as the name signifies, an aerobian being cannot exist. To
bring about the transformation of the yeast of beer into
mycoderma cerevisiae or into penicillium glaucum we must accept
the conditions under which these two forms are obtained. If M.
Pasteur will persist in keeping his yeast in media which are
incompatible with the desired modification, it is clear that the
results which he obtains must always be negative."

Contrary to this perfectly gratuitous assertion of M. Trecul's we
do not keep our yeast in media which are calculated to prevent
its transformation into penicillium. As we have just seen, the
principal aim and object of our experiment was to bring this
minute plant into contact with air, and under conditions that
would allow the penicillium to develop with perfect freedom. We
conducted our experiments exactly as Turpin and Hoffmann
conducted theirs, and exactly as they stipulate that such
experiments should be conducted--with the one sole difference,
indispensable to the correctness of our observations, that we
carefully guarded ourselves against those causes of error which
they did not take the least trouble to avoid. It is possible to
produce a ready entrance and escape of pure air in the case of
the double-necked flasks which we have so often employed in the
course of this work, without having recourse to the continuous
passage of a current of air. Having made a file-mark on the thin
curved neck at a distance of two or three centimetres (an inch)
from the flask, we must cut round the neck at this point with a
glazier's diamond, and then remove it, taking care to cover the
opening immediately with a sheef of paper which has been passed
through the flame, and which we must fasten with a thread round
the part of the neck still left. In this manner we may increase
or prolong the fructification of fungoid growths, or the life of
the aerobian ferments in our flasks.

What we have said of Penicillium glaucum will apply equally to
Mycoderma cerevisiae. Notwithstanding that Turpin and Trecul may
assert to the contrary, yeast, in contact with air as it was
under the conditions of the experiment just described, will not
yield Mycoderma vini or Mycoderma cerevisiae any more than it
will Penicillium.

The experiments described in the preceding paragraphs on the
increase of organized ferments in mineral media of the
composition described, are of the greatest physiological
interest. Amongst other results, they show that all the proteic
matter of ferments may be produced by the vital activity of the
cells, which, apart altogether from the influence of light or
free oxygen (unless indeed, we are dealing with aerobian moulds
which require free oxygen), have the power of developing a
chemical activity between carbohydrates, ammoniacal salts,
phosphates, and sulphates of potassium and magnesium. It may be
admitted with truth that a similar effect obtains in the case of
the higher plants, so that in the existing state of science we
fail to conceive what serious reason can be urged against our
considering this effect as general. It would be perfectly logical
to extend the results of which we are speaking to all plants, and
to believe that the proteic matter of vegetables, and perhaps of
animals also, is formed exclusively by the activity of the cells
operating upon the ammoniacal and other mineral salts of the sap
or plasma of the blood, and the carbo-hydrates, the formation of
which, in the case of the higher plants, requires only the
concurrence of the chemical impulse of green light.