Part 11

'All dry bodies,' said Aristotle, 'which become damp, and all damp bodies which are dried, engender animal life.' Bees, according to Virgil, are produced from the corrupted entrails of a young bull. At the time of Louis XIV. we were hardly more advanced. A celebrated alchemist doctor, Van Helmont, wrote: 'The smells which rise from the bottom of morasses produce frogs, slugs, leeches, grasses, and other things.' But most extraordinary of all was the true recipe given by Van Helmont for producing a pot of mice. It suffices to press a dirty shirt into the orifice of a vessel containing a little corn. After about twenty-one days, the ferment proceeding from the dirty shirt modified by the odour of the corn effects the transmutation of the wheat into mice. Van Helmont, who asserted that he had witnessed the fact, added with assurance:

'The mice are born full grown; there are both males and females. To reproduce the species it suffices to pair them.'

'Scoop out a hole,' said he again, 'in a brick, put into it some sweet basil, crushed, lay a second brick upon the first so that the hole may be perfectly covered. Expose the two bricks to the sun, and at the end of a few days the smell of the sweet basil, acting as a ferment, will change the herb into real scorpions. An Italian naturalist, Redi, was the first to subject this question of spontaneous generation to a more attentive examination. He showed that maggots in meat are not spontaneously generated, but that they are the larvæ of flies' eggs. To prevent the production of maggots, Redi showed that it was only necessary to surround the meat with fine gauze before exposing it to the air. As no flies could alight upon meat thus protected, there were no eggs deposited, and consequently neither larvæ nor maggots. But at the moment when the doctrine of spontaneous generation began to lose ground by the limitation of its domain, the discovery of the microscope brought to this doctrine new and formidable support. In presence of the world of animalculæ, the partisans of spontaneous generation raised a note of triumph. 'We may have been mistaken,' they said, 'as to the origin of mice and maggots, but is it possible to believe that microscopic organisms are not the outcome of spontaneous generation? How can we otherwise explain their presence and rapid multiplication in all dead animal or vegetable matter in process of decomposition?'

Buffon lent the authority of his name to the doctrine of spontaneous generation. He even devised a system to explain this hypothesis. In 1745 two ecclesiastics entered upon an eager controversy for and against this question. While the English Catholic priest Needham adopted the theory of spontaneous generation, the Italian priest Spallanzani energetically opposed it; but while in the eyes of the public the Italian remained master of the dispute, his success was more apparent than real, more in word than in deed.

The problem was again brought forward in a more emphatic manner in 1858. M. Pouchet, director of the Museum of Natural History at Rouen, in addressing the Academy of Sciences, declared that he had succeeded in demonstrating in a manner absolutely certain the existence of microscopic living organisms, which had come into the world without germs, and consequently without parents similar to themselves.

How came Pasteur to throw himself into this discussion, at first sight so far removed from his other occupations? The results of his researches on fermentation led him to it as a sort of duty. He was carried on by a series of logical deductions. Let us recall to mind, for example, the experiment in which Pasteur exposed to the heat of the sun water sweetened with sugar and mixed with phosphates of potash and magnesia, a little sulphate of ammonia, and some carbonate of lime. In these conditions the lactic fermentation was often seen to develop itself--that is to say, the sugar became lactic acid, which combined with the lime of the carbonate to form lactate of lime. This salt crystallises in long needles, and ends sometimes by filling the whole vase, while a little organised living thing is at the same time produced and multiplied. If the experiment is carried on further, another fermentation generally succeeds to this one. Moving vibrios make their appearance and multiply, the lactate of lime disappears, the fluidity returns to the mass, and the lactate finds itself replaced by butyrate of lime. What a succession of strange phenomena! How did life appear in this sweetened medium, composed originally of such simple elements, and apparently so far removed from all production of life? This lactic ferment, these butyric vibrios, whence do they come? Are they formed of themselves? or are they produced by germs? If the latter, whence do the germs come? The appearance of living organised ferments had become for Pasteur the all-important question, since in all fermentations he had observed a correlation between the chemical action set up and the presence of microscopic organisms. Prior to the establishment of the facts already mentioned, these difficulties did not exist. The theory of Liebig was universally accepted.

Thus the question as to the origin of microscopic organisms and the part played by them in fermentation was imposed as a necessity on Pasteur. He could not proceed further in his researches without having solved this question.

In the month of October, 1857, Pasteur was called to Paris. After having been made dean at an incredibly early age, he was now, at the age of thirty-five, entrusted with the scientific studies at the École Normale Supérieure. But if the position was flattering, it did not give to Pasteur what he most desired. As he had no Professor's chair, he had no laboratory. In those days science, and the higher education in science, were at a discount. It was the period when Claude Bernard lived in a small damp laboratory, when M. Berthelot, though known through his great labours, was still nothing more than an assistant in the Collège de France.

At the time here referred to, the Minister of Public Instruction said to Pasteur, 'There is no clause in the budget to grant you 1,500 francs a year to defray the expense of experiments.' Pasteur did not hesitate to establish a laboratory at his own expense in one of the garrets of the École Normale. We can readily imagine the modesty of such an establishment in such a place. Dividing his time between his professional duties and his laboratory experiments, Pasteur never went out but to talk over his daily researches with M. Biot, M. Dumas, M. de Senarmont, and M. Balard. M. Biot especially was his habitual confidant. The day when M. Biot learned that Pasteur proposed to study the obscure question of spontaneous generation, he strongly dissuaded him from entangling himself in this labyrinth. 'You will never escape from it,' said he, 'you will only lose your time;' and when Pasteur attempted some timid observations with the view of showing that in the order of his studies it was indispensable for him to attack this problem, M. Biot grew angry. Although endowed, as Sainte-Beuve has said, with all the qualities of curiosity, of subtlety, of penetration, of ingenious exactitude, of method, and of perspicuity, with all the qualities, in short, essential and secondary, M. Biot treated the project of Pasteur as a presumptuous adventure.

Bolder than M. Biot, but with a circumspection always alive, M. Dumas declared to Pasteur, without, however, further insisting upon the point, that he would not advise anyone to occupy himself too long with such a subject. M. de Senarmont alone took the part of Pasteur, and said to M. Biot:

'Let Pasteur alone. If there is nothing to be found in the path which he has entered upon, do not be alarmed, he will not continue in it. But,' added he, 'I should be surprised if he found nothing in it.'

M. Pouchet had previously stated the problem with precision:

'The opponents of spontaneous generation assert that the germs of microscopic organisms exist in the air, which transports them to a distance. What, then, will these opponents say if I succeed in inducing the generation of living organisms, while substituting artificial air for that of the atmosphere?'

Pouchet then devised this ingenious experiment. He filled a bottle with boiling water, hermetically sealed it with the greatest care, and plunged it upside down into a basin of mercury. When the water was quite cold he uncorked the bottle under the metal, and introduced into it half a litre of pure oxygen gas, which is as necessary to the life of the smallest microscopic organism as it is to that of the larger animals and vegetables. Up to this time there was nothing in the vessel but pure water and oxygen. Pouchet then introduced a minute bunch of hay which had been enclosed in a corked bottle, and exposed in a stove for a long time to a temperature of more than 100 degrees. At the end of eight days a mouldiness was developed in this infusion of hay. 'Where does this come from?' cried M. Pouchet triumphantly. Certainly not from the oxygen, which had been prepared from a chemical compound at the temperature of incandescence. The water had been equally deprived of germs, since at the boiling temperature all germs would have been destroyed. The hay also could not have contained them, for it had been taken from a stove heated to 100 degrees. As it was urged, however, that certain organisms could resist this temperature, M. Pouchet heated the hay from 200 to 300 degrees, or to any temperature that might be desired.

Pasteur came to disturb the triumph of M. Pouchet.

In a lecture which he gave at the Sorbonne in 1864, before a large assembly composed of savants, philosophers, ladies, priests, and novelists--Alexandre Dumas was in the first row--all showing eager interest in the problems to be dealt with in the lecture, Pasteur thus criticised the experiment of Pouchet: 'This experiment is irreproachable, but irreproachable only on those points which have attracted the attention of its author. I will demonstrate before you that there is a cause of error which M. Pouchet has not perceived, which he has not in the least suspected, which no one before him suspected, but which renders his experiment as completely illusory as that of Van Helmont's pot of dirty linen. I will show you where the mice got in. I will prove to you, in short, that it is the mercury which carries the germs into the vessels, or, rather, not to go beyond the demonstrated fact, the dust which is suspended in the air.'

To render visible this floating dust, Pasteur caused the hall to be darkened, and pierced the obscurity by a beam of light. There then appeared, dancing and twirling in the beam, thousands of little particles of dust.

'If we had time to examine them well,' continued Pasteur, 'we should see them, though agitated with various movements, falling downwards more or less quickly. It is thus that all objects become covered with dust--the furniture, the table, the mercury in this basin. Since this mercury was taken from the mine, how much dust must have fallen upon it, to say nothing of all that has been intimately mixed up with it during the numerous manipulations to which it has been subjected in the laboratory? It is not possible to touch this mercury, to place the hand in it, or a bottle, without introducing into the interior of the basin the dust which lies on its surface. You will now see what takes place.'

Projecting, in the darkness, the beam of light upon the basin of mercury, the liquid metal shone forth with its usual brilliancy. Pasteur then sprinkled some dust upon the mercury, and, plunging a glass rod into it, the dust was seen to travel towards the spot where the rod entered the mercury, and to penetrate into the space between the glass and the metal.

'Yes,' exclaimed Pasteur with a voice which gave evidence of the sincerity of his conviction, 'yes, M. Pouchet had removed the germs from the water and from the hay, but he had neglected to remove the dust from the surface of the mercury. This is the cause of his error; this is what has vitiated his whole arrangement.'

Pasteur then instituted experiments exactly similar to those of Pouchet, but taking care to remove every cause of error which had escaped the latter. He employed a glass bulb with a long neck, which he bent, and connected with a tube of platinum placed in a furnace, so that it could be heated nearly to redness. In the bulb he placed some very putrescible liquids--urine for example. When the furnace which surrounded the platinum tube was in action, Pasteur boiled the liquid for some minutes, then he allowed it to cool, keeping the fire around the platinum tube still active. During the cooling of the bulb the external air was introduced, after having first travelled through the red-hot platinum tube. The liquid was thus placed in contact with air whose suspended germs were all burnt up.

In an experiment thus carried out, the urine remains unchanged--it undergoes only a very slight oxidation, which darkens its colour a little--but it exhibits no kind of putrefaction. If it be desired to repeat this experiment with alkaline liquids, such as milk, the temperature must be raised a little above the boiling point--a condition easily realised with the apparatus just described. It is only necessary to connect with the free extremity of the platinum tube a glass tube bent at right angles, and to plunge the latter to a depth of some centimeters into a basin of mercury. In these circumstances ebullition goes on under a pressure greater than that of the atmosphere, consequently at a temperature higher than 100 degrees Centigrade.

It remained, however, to be proved that the floating dust of the air embraces the germs of the lower organisms. Through a tube stopped with cotton wool, Pasteur, by means of an aspirator, drew ordinary air. In passing through the wool it was filtered, depositing therein all its dust. Taking a watch-glass, Pasteur placed on it a drop of water in which he steeped the cotton wool stopper and squeezed out of it, upon a glass slide, a drop of water which contained a portion of the intercepted dust. He repeated this process until he had extracted from the cotton nearly all the intercepted dust. The operation is simple and easily executed. Placing the glass slide with a little of the soiled liquid under a microscope, we can distinguish particles of soot, fragments of silk, scraps of wool, or of cotton. But, in the midst of this inanimate dust, living particles make their appearance--that is to say, organisms belonging to the animal or vegetable kingdom, eggs of infusoria, and spores of cryptogams. Germs, animalculæ, flakes of mildew, float in the atmosphere, ready to fall into any appropriate medium, and to develop themselves at a prodigious rate.

But are these apparently organised particles which are found thus associated with amorphous dust indeed the germs of microscopic living beings? Granting the experiment devised by Pasteur to verify that of Pouchet to be irreproachable, is Pasteur's interpretation of it rigorously true? In presence of the problem of the origin of life, all hypotheses are possible as long as the truth has not been clearly revealed. Truly, it might be argued, if fermentation be caused by germs, then the air which has passed through a red-hot platinum tube cannot provoke fermentation, or putrefaction, or the formation of organisms, because the germs of these last, which were suspended in the air, have lost all vitality. But what right have you to speak of germs? How do you know that the previous existence of germs is necessary to the appearance and development of microscopic organisms? May not the prime mover of the life of microscopic organisms be some appropriate medium started into activity by magnetism, electricity, or even ozone? Now, by the passing of the air through your red-hot platinum tube these active powers are destroyed, and the sterility of your bulb of urine has nothing surprising in it.

The partisans of spontaneous generation had often employed this apparently formidable reasoning, and Pasteur thought it necessary to strengthen the proof that the cotton wool through which his air had filtered was really charged with germs.

By an ingenious method he sowed the contents of the cotton wool in the same liquids that had been rendered sterile by boiling. The liquids became fertile, even more fertile than if they had been exposed to the free contact of atmospheric air. Now, what was there in the dust contained in the cotton wool? Only amorphous particles of silk, cotton, starch; and, along with these, minute bodies which, by their transparency and their structure, were not to be distinguished from the germs of microscopic organisms. The presence of imponderable fluids could not here be pleaded.

Nevertheless, fearing that determined scepticism might still attribute to the cotton wool an influence of some sort on account of its being an organised substance, Pasteur substituted for the stoppers of cotton wool stoppers of asbestos previously heated to redness. The result was the same.

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