Fragments of science Part 43

I have glanced at inorganic nature--at the sea, and the sun, and the vapour, and the snow-flake, and at organic nature as represented by the fern and the oak. That same sun which warmed the water and liberated the vapour, exerts a subtler power on the nutriment of the tree. It takes hold of matter wholly unfit for the purposes of nutrition, separates its nutritive from its non-nutritive portions, gives, the former to the vegetable, and carries the others away.

Planted in the earth, bathed by the air, and tended by the sun, the tree is traversed by its sap, the cells are formed, the woody fibre is spun, and the whole is woven to a texture wonderful even to the naked eye, but a million-fold more so to microscopic vision. Does consciousness mix in any way with these processes? No man can tell.

Our only ground for a negative conclusion is the absence of those outward manifestations from which feeling is usually inferred. But even these are not entirely absent. In the greenhouses of Kew we may see that a leaf can close, in response to a proper stimulus, as promptly as the human fingers themselves; and while there Dr. Hooker will tell us of the wondrous fly-catching and fly-devouring power of the Dionaea. No man can say that the feelings of the animal are not represented by a drowsier consciousness in the vegetable world. At all events, no line has ever been drawn between the conscious and the unconscious; for the vegetable shades into the animal by such fine gradations, that is impossible to say where the one ends and the other begins.

In all such enquiries we are necessarily limited by our own powers: we observe what our senses, armed with the aids furnished by Science, enable us to observe; nothing more. The evidences as to consciousness in the vegetable world depend wholly upon our capacity to observe and weigh them. Alter the capacity, and the evidence would alter too.

Would that which to us is a total absence of any manifestation of consciousness be the same to a being with our capacities indefinitely multiplied? To such a being I can imagine not only the vegetable, but the mineral world, responsive to the proper irritants, the response differing only in degree from those exaggerated manifestations, which, in virtue of their magnitude, appeal to our weak powers of observation.

Our conclusion, however, must be based, not on powers that we imagine, but upon those that we possess. What do they reveal? As the earth and atmosphere offer themselves as the nutriment of the vegetable world, so does the latter, which contains no const.i.tuent not found in inorganic nature, offer itself to the animal world. Mixed with certain inorganic substances--water, for example--the vegetable const.i.tutes, in the long run, the sole sustenance of the animal.

Animals may be divided into two cla.s.ses, the first of which can utilise the vegetable world immediately, having chemical forces strong enough to cope with its most refractory parts; the second cla.s.s use the vegetable world mediately; that is to say, after its finer portions have been extracted and stored up by the first. But in neither cla.s.s have we an atom newly created. The animal world is, so to say, a distillation through the vegetable world from inorganic nature.

From this point of view all three worlds would const.i.tute a unity, in which I picture life as immanent everywhere. Nor am I anxious to shut out the idea that the life here spoken of, may be but a subordinate part and function of a Higher Life, as the living moving blood is subordinate to the living man. I resist no such idea as long as it is not dogmatically imposed. Left for the human mind freely to operate upon, the idea has ethical vitality; but, stiffened into a dogma, the inner force disappears, and the outward yoke of a usurping hierarchy takes its place.

The problem before us is, at all events, capable of definite statement. We have on the one hand strong grounds for concluding that the earth was once a molten ma.s.s. We now find it not only swathed by an atmosphere, and covered by a sea, but also crowded with living things. The question is, How were they introduced? Certainty may be as unattainable here as Bishop Butler held it to be in matters of religion; but in the contemplation of probabilities the thoughtful mind is forced to take a side. The conclusion of Science, which recognises unbroken causal connection between the past and the present, would undoubtedly be that the molten earth contained within it elements of life, which grouped themselves into their present forms as the planet cooled. The difficulty and reluctance encountered by this conception, arise solely from the fact that the theologic conception obtained a prior footing in the human mind. Did the latter depend upon reasoning alone, it could not hold its ground for an hour against its rival. But it is warmed into life and strength by a.s.sociated hopes and fears--and not only by these, which are more or less mean, but by that loftiness of thought and feeling which lifts its possessor above the atmosphere of self, and which the theologic idea, in its n.o.bler forms, has engendered in n.o.ble minds.

Were not man's origin implicated, we should accept without a murmur the derivation of animal and vegetable life from what we call inorganic nature. The conclusion of pure intellect points this way and no other. But the purity is troubled by our interests in this life, and by our hopes and fears regarding the life to come. Reason is traversed by the emotions, anger rising in the weaker heads to the height of suggesting that the suppression of the enquirer by the arm of the law would be an act agreeable to G.o.d, and serviceable to man.

But this foolishness is more than neutralised by the sympathy of the wise; and in England at least, so long as the courtesy which befits an earnest theme is adhered to, such sympathy is ever ready for an honest man. None of us here need shrink from saying all that he has a right to say. We ought, however, to remember that it is not only a band of Jesuits, weaving their schemes of intellectual slavery, under the innocent guise 'of education,' that we are opposing. Our foes are to some extent of our own household, including not only the ignorant and the pa.s.sionate, but a minority of minds of high calibre and culture, lovers of freedom moreover, who, though its objective bull be riddled by logic, still find the ethic life of their religion unimpaired. But while such considerations ought to influence the form of our argument, and prevent it from ever slipping out of the region of courtesy into that of scorn or abuse, its substance, I think, ought to be maintained and presented in unmitigated strength.

In the year 1855 the chair of philosophy in the University of Munich happened to be filled by a Catholic priest of great critical penetration, great learning, and great courage, who had borne the brunt of battle long before Doellinger. His Jesuit colleagues, he knew, inculcated the belief that every human soul is sent into the world from G.o.d by a separate and supernatural act of creation. In a work ent.i.tled the 'Origin of the Human Soul,' Professor Frohschammer, the philosopher here alluded to, was hardy enough to question this doctrine, and to affirm that man, body and soul, comes from his parents, the act of creation being, therefore, mediate and secondary only. The Jesuits keep a sharp look out on all temerities of this kind; and their organ, the 'Civilita Cattolica,' immediately pounced upon Frohschammer. His book was branded as 'pestilent,' placed in the Index, and stamped with the condemnation of the Church. [Footnote: King Maximilian II. brought Liebig to Munich, he helped Helmholtz in his researches, and loved to liberate and foster science. But through his liberal concession of power to the Jesuits in the schools, he did far more damage to the intellectual freedom of his country than his superst.i.tious predecessor Ludwig I. Priding himself on being a German Prince, Ludwig would not tolerate the interference of the Roman party with the political affairs of Bavaria.] The Jesuit notion does not err on the score of indefiniteness. According to it, the Power whom Goethe does not dare to name, and whom Ga.s.sendi and Clerk Maxwell present to us under the guise of a 'Manufacturer' of atoms, turns out annually, for England and Wales alone, a quarter of a million of new souls. Taken in connection with the dictum of Mr. Carlyle, that this annual increment to our population are 'mostly fools,' but little profit to the human heart seems derivable from this mode of regarding the Divine operations.

But if the Jesuit notion be rejected, what are we to accept?

Physiologists say that every human being comes from an egg not more than the 1/120th of an inch in diameter. Is this egg matter? I hold it to be so, as much as the seed of a fern or of an oak. Nine months go to the making of it into a man. Are the additions made during this period of gestation drawn from matter? I think so undoubtedly. If there be anything besides matter in the egg, or in the infant subsequently slumbering in the womb, what is it? The questions already asked with reference to the stars of snow may be here repeated. Mr. Martineau will complain that I am disenchanting the babe of its wonder; but is this the case? I figure it growing in the womb, woven by a something not itself, without conscious partic.i.p.ation on the part of either father or mother, and appearing in due time a living miracle, with all its organs and all their implications.

Consider the work accomplished during these nine months in forming the eye alone--with its lens, and its humours, and its miraculous retina behind. Consider the ear with its tympanum, cochlea, and Corti's organ--an instrument of three thousand strings, built adjacent to the brain, and employed by it to sift, separate, and interpret, antecedent to all consciousness, the sonorous tremors of the external world. All this has been accomplished, not only without man's contrivance, but without his knowledge, the secret of his own organisation having been withheld from him since his birth in the immeasurable past, until these latter days. Matter I define as that mysterious thing by which all this is accomplished. How it came to have this power is a question on which I never ventured an opinion. If, then, Matter starts as 'a beggar,' it is, in my view, because the Jacobs of theology have deprived it of its birthright. Mr. Martineau need fear no disenchantment. Theories of evolution go but a short way towards the explanation of this mystery; the Ages, let us hope, will at length give us a Poet competent to deal with it aright.

There are men, and they include amongst them some of the best of the race of man, upon whose minds this mystery falls without producing either warmth or colour. The 'dry light' of the intellect suffices for them, and they live their n.o.ble lives untouched by a desire to give the mystery shape or expression. There are, on the other hand, men whose minds are warmed and coloured by its presence, and who, under its stimulus, attain to moral heights which have never been overtopped. Different spiritual climates are necessary for the healthy existence of these two cla.s.ses of men; and different climates must be accorded them. The history of humanity, however, proves the experience of the second cla.s.s to ill.u.s.trate the most pervading need.

The world will have religion of some kind, even though it should fly for it to the intellectual wh.o.r.edom of 'spiritualism.' What is really wanted is the lifting power of an ideal element in human life. But the free play of this power must be preceded by its release from the practical materialism of the present, as well as from the torn swaddling bands of the past. It is now in danger of being stupefied by the one, or strangled by the other. I look, however, forward to a time when the strength, insight, and elevation which now visit us in mere hints and glimpses, during moments 'of clearness and vigour,'

shall be the stable and permanent possession of purer and mightier minds than ours--purer and mightier, partly because of their deeper knowledge of matter and their more faithful conformity to its laws.

XII. FERMENTATION, & ITS BEARINGS ON SURGERY & MEDICINE.

[Footnote: A Discourse delivered before the Glasgow Science Lectures a.s.sociation, October 19, 1876.]

ONE of the most remarkable characteristics of the age in which we live, is its desire and tendency to connect itself organically with preceding ages--to ascertain how the state of things that now is came to be what it is. And the more earnestly and profoundly this problem is studied, the more clearly comes into view the vast and varied debt which the world of to-day owes to that fore-world, in which man by skill, valour, and well-directed strength first replenished and subdued the earth. Our prehistoric fathers may have been savages, but they were clever and observant ones. They founded agriculture by the discovery and development of seeds whose origin is now unknown. They tamed and harnessed their animal antagonists, and sent them down to us as ministers, instead of rivals in the fight for life. Later on, when the claims of luxury added themselves to those of necessity, we find the same spirit of invention at work. We have no historic account of the first brewer, but we glean from history that his art was practised, and its produce relished, more than two thousand years ago.

Theophrastus, who was born nearly four hundred years before Christ, described beer as the wine of barley. It is extremely difficult to preserve beer in a hot country, still, Egypt was the land in which it was first brewed, the desire of man to quench his thirst with this exhilarating beverage overcoming all the obstacles which a hot climate threw in the way of its manufacture.

Our remote ancestors had also learned by experience that wine maketh glad the heart of man. Noah, we are informed, planted a vineyard, drank of the wine, and experienced the consequences. But, though wine and beer possess so old a history, a very few years ago no man knew the secret of their formation. Indeed, it might be said that until the present year no thorough and scientific account was ever given of the agencies which come into play in the manufacture of beer, of the conditions necessary to its health, and of the maladies and vicissitudes to which it is subject. Hitherto the art and practice of the brewer have resembled those of the physician, both being founded on empirical observation. By this is meant the observation of facts, apart from the principles which explain them, and which give the mind an intelligent mastery over them. The brewer learnt from long experience the conditions, not the reasons, of success. But he had to contend, and has still to contend, against unexplained perplexities.

Over and over again his care has been rendered nugatory; his beer has fallen into acidity or rottenness, and disastrous losses have been sustained, of which he has been unable to a.s.sign the cause. It is the hidden enemies against which the physician and the brewer have hitherto contended, that recent researches are dragging into the light of day, thus preparing the way for their final extermination.

Let us glance for a moment at the outward and visible signs of fermentation. A few weeks ago I paid a visit to a private still in a Swiss chalet; and this is what I saw. In the peasant's bedroom was a cask with a very large bunghole carefully closed. The cask contained cherries which had lain in it for fourteen days. It was not entirely filled with the fruit, an air-s.p.a.ce being left above the cherries when they were put in. I had the bung removed, and a small lamp dipped into this s.p.a.ce. Its flame was instantly extinguished. The oxygen of the air had entirely disappeared, its place being taken by carbonic acid gas. [Footnote: The gas which is exhaled from the lungs after the oxygen of the air has done its duty in purifying the blood, the same also which effervesces from soda water and champagne.] I tasted the cherries: they were very sour, though when put into the cask they were sweet. The cherries and the liquid a.s.sociated with them were then placed in a copper boiler, to which a copper head was closely fitted.

From the head proceeded a copper tube which pa.s.sed straight through a vessel of cold water, and issued at the other side. Under the open end of the tube was placed a bottle to receive the spirit distilled.

The flame of small wood-splinters being applied to the boiler, after a time vapour rose into the head, pa.s.sed through the tube, was condensed by the cold of the water, and fell in a liquid fillet into the bottle.

On being tasted, it proved to be that fiery and intoxicating spirit known in commerce as Kirsch or Kirschwa.s.ser.

The cherries, it should be remembered, were left to themselves, no ferment of any kind being added to them. In this respect what has been said of the cherry applies also to the grape. At the vintage the fruit of the vine is placed in proper vessels, and abandoned to its own action. It ferments, producing carbonic acid; its sweetness disappears, and at the end of a certain time the unintoxicating grape-juice is converted into intoxicating wine. Here, as in the case of the cherries, the fermentation is spontaneous--in what sense spontaneous will appear more clearly by-and-by.

It is needless for me to tell a Glasgow audience that the beer-brewer does not set to work in this way. In the first place the brewer deals not with the juice of fruits, but with the juice of barley. The barley having been steeped for a sufficient time in water, it is drained and subjected to a temperature sufficient to cause the moist grain to germinate; after which, it is completely dried upon a kiln.

It then receives the name of malt. The malt is crisp to the teeth, and decidedly sweeter to the taste than the original barley. It is ground, mashed up in warm water, then boiled with hops until all the soluble portions have been extracted; the infusion thus produced being called the wort. This is drawn off, and cooled as rapidly as possible; then, instead of abandoning the infusion, as the wine-maker does, to its own action, the brewer mixes yeast with his wort, and places it in vessels each with only one aperture open to the air. Soon after the addition of the yeast, a brownish froth, which is really new yeast, issues from the aperture, and falls like a cataract into troughs prepared to receive it. This frothing and foaming of the wort is a proof that the fermentation is active.

Whence comes the yeast which issues so copiously from the fermenting tub? What is this yeast, and how did the brewer become possessed of it? Examine its quant.i.ty before and after fermentation. The brewer introduces, say 10 cwts. of yeast; he collects 40, or it may be 50, cwts. The yeast has, therefore, augmented from four to five fold during the fermentation. Shall we conclude that this additional yeast has been spontaneously generated by the wort? Are we not rather reminded of that seed which fell into good ground, and brought forth fruit, some thirty fold, some sixty fold, some an hundred fold? On examination, this notion of organic growth turns out to be more than a mere surmise. In the year 1680, when the microscope was still in its infancy, Leeuwenhoek turned the instrument upon this substance, and found it composed of minute globules suspended in a liquid. Thus knowledge rested until 1835, when Cagniard de la Tour in France, and Schwann in Germany, independently, but animated by it common thought, turned microscopes of improved definition and heightened powers upon yeast, and found it budding and sprouting before their eyes. The augmentation of the yeast alluded to above was thus proved to arise from the growth of a minute plant now called Torula (or Saccharomyces) Cerevisiae. Spontaneous generation is therefore out of the question.

The brewer deliberately sows the yeast-plant, which grows and multiplies in the wort as its proper soil. This discovery marks an epoch in the history of fermentation.

But where did the brewer find his yeast? The reply to this question is similar to that which must be given if it were asked where the brewer found his barley. He has received the seeds of both of them from preceding generations. Could we connect without solution of continuity the present with the past, we should probably be able to trace back the yeast employed by my friend Sir Fowell Buxton to-day to that employed by some Egyptian brewer two thousand years ago. But you may urge that there must have been a time when the first yeast-cell was generated. Granted--exactly as there was a time when the first barley-corn was generated. Let not the delusion lay hold of you that a living thing is easily generated because it is small. Both the yeast-plant and the barley-plant lose themselves in the dim twilight of antiquity, and in this our day there is no more proof of the spontaneous generation of the one, than there is of the spontaneous generation of the other.

I stated a moment ago that the fermentation of grape-juice was spontaneous; but I was careful to add, in what sense spontaneous will appear more clearly by-and-by.' Now this is the sense meant. The wine-maker does not, like the brewer and distiller, deliberately introduce either yeast; or any equivalent of yeast, into his vats; he does not consciously sow in them any plant, or the germ of any plant; indeed, he has been hitherto in ignorance whether plants or germs of any kind have had anything to do with his operations. Still, when the fermented grape-juice is examined, the living Torula concerned in alcoholic fermentation never fails to make its appearance. How is this? If no living germ has been introduced into the wine-vat, whence comes the life so invariably developed there?

You may be disposed to reply, with Turpin and others, that in virtue of its own inherent powers, the grape-juice when brought into contact with the vivifying atmospheric oxygen, runs spontaneously and of its own accord into these low forms of life. I have not the slightest objection to this explanation, provided proper evidence can be adduced in support of it. But the evidence adduced in its favour, as far as I am acquainted with it, snaps asunder under the strain of scientific criticism. It is, as far as I can see, the evidence of men, who however keen and clever as observers, are not rigidly trained experimenters. These alone are aware of the precautions necessary in investigations of this delicate kind. In reference, then, to the life of the wine-vat, what is the decision of experiment when carried out by competent men? Let a quant.i.ty of the clear, filtered 'must' of the grape be so boiled as to destroy such germs as it may have contracted from the air or otherwise. In contact with germless air the uncontaminated must never ferments. All the materials for spontaneous generation are there, but so long as there is no seed sown, there is no life developed, and no sign of that fermentation which is the concomitant of life. Nor need you resort to a boiled liquid. The grape is sealed by its own skin against contamination from without. By an ingenious device Pasteur has extracted from the interior of the grape its pure juice, and proved that in contact with pure air it never acquires the power to ferment itself, nor to produce fermentation in other liquids. [Footnote: The liquids of the healthy animal body are also sealed from external contamination. Pure blood, for example, drawn with due precautions from the veins, will never ferment or putrefy in contact with pure air.] It is not, therefore, in the interior of the grape that the origin of the life observed in the vat is to be sought.

What then is its true origin? This is Pasteur's answer, which his well-proved accuracy renders worthy of all confidence. At the time of the vintage microscopic particles are observed adherent, both to the outer surface of the grape and of the twigs which support the grape.

Brush these particles into a capsule of pure water. It is rendered turbid by the dust. Examined by a microscope, some of these minute particles are seen to present the appearance of organised--cells.

Instead of receiving them in water, let them be brushed into the pure inert juice of the grape. Forty-eight hours after this is done, our familiar Torula is observed budding and sprouting, the growth of the plant being accompanied by all the other signs of active fermentation.

What is the inference to be drawn from this experiment? Obviously that the particles adherent to the external surface of the grape include the germs of that life which, after they have been sown in the juice, appears in such profusion. Wine is sometimes objected to on the ground that fermentation is 'artificial;' but we notice here the responsibility of nature. The ferment of the grape clings like a parasite to the surface of the grape; and the art of the wine-maker from time immemorial has consisted in bringing--and it may be added, ignorantly bringing--two things thus closely a.s.sociated by nature into actual contact with each other. For thousands of years, what has been done consciously by the brewer, has been done unconsciously by the wine-grower. The one has sown his leaven just as much as the other.

Nor is it necessary to impregnate the beer-wort with yeast to provoke fermentation. Abandoned to the contact of our common air, it sooner or later ferments; but the chances are that the produce of that fermentation, instead of being agreeable, would be disgusting to the taste. By a rare accident we might get the true alcoholic fermentation, but the odds against obtaining it would be enormous.

Pure air acting upon a lifeless liquid will never provoke fermentation; but our ordinary air is the vehicle of numberless germs which act as ferments when they fall into appropriate infusions. Some of them produce acidity, some putrefaction. The germs of our yeast-plant are also in the air; but so sparingly distributed that an infusion like beer-wort, exposed to the air, is almost sure to be taken possession of by foreign organisms. In fact, the maladies of beer are wholly due to the admixture of these objectionable ferments, whose forms and modes of nutrition differ materially from those of the true leaven.

Working in an atmosphere charged with the germs of these organisms, you can understand how easy it is to fall into error in studying the action of any one of them. Indeed it is only the most accomplished experimenter, who, moreover, avails himself of every means of checking his conclusions, that can walk without tripping through this land of pitfalls. Such a man the French chemist Pasteur has. .h.i.therto proved himself to be. He has taught us how to separate the commingled ferments of our air, and to study their pure individual action. Guided by him, let us fix our attention more particularly upon the growth and action of the true yeast-plant under different conditions. Let it be sown in a fermentable liquid, which is supplied with plenty of pure air. The plant will flourish in the aerated infusion, and produce large quant.i.ties of carbonic acid gas--a compound, as you know, of carbon and oxygen. The oxygen thus consumed by the plant is the free oxygen of the air, which we suppose to be abundantly supplied to the liquid. The action is so far similar to the respiration of animals, which inspire oxygen and expire carbonic acid. If we examine the liquid even when the vigour of the plant has reached its maximum, we hardly find in it a trace of alcohol. The yeast has grown and flourished, but it has almost ceased to act as a ferment. And could every individual yeast-cell seize, without any impediment, free oxygen from the surrounding liquid, it is certain that it would cease to act as a ferment altogether.

What, then, are the conditions under which the yeast-plant must be placed so that it may display its characteristic quality? Reflection on the facts already referred to suggests a reply, and rigid experiment confirms the suggestion. Consider the Alpine cherries in their closed vessel. Consider the beer in its barrel, with a single small aperture open to the air, through which it is observed not to imbibe oxygen, but to pour forth carbonic acid. Whence come the volumes of oxygen necessary to the production of this latter gas? The small quant.i.ty of atmospheric air dissolved in the wort and overlying it would be totally incompetent to supply the necessary oxygen. In no other way can the yeast-plant obtain the gas necessary for its respiration than by wrenching it from surrounding substances in which the oxygen exists, not free, but in a state of combination. It decomposes the sugar of the solution in which it grows, produces heat, breathes forth carbonic acid gas, and one of the liquid products of the decomposition is our familiar alcohol. The act of fermentation, then, is a result of the effort of the little plant to maintain its respiration by means of combined oxygen, when its supply of free oxygen is cut off. As defined by Pasteur, fermentation is life without air.

But here the knowledge of that thorough investigator comes to our aid to warn us against errors which have 'been committed over and over again. It is not all yeast-cells that can thus live without air and provoke fermentation. They must be young cells which have caught their vegetative vigour from contact with free oxygen. But once possessed of this vigour the yeast may be transplanted into a saccharine infusion absolutely purged of air, where it will continue to live at the expense of the oxygen, carbon, and other const.i.tuents of the infusion. Under these new conditions its life, as a plant, will be by no means so vigorous as when it had a supply of free oxygen, but its action as a ferment will be indefinitely greater.

Does the yeast-plant stand alone in its power of provoking alcoholic fermentation? It would be singular if amid the mult.i.tude of low vegetable forms no other could be found capable of acting in a similar way. And here again we have occasion to marvel at that sagacity of observation among the ancients to which we owe so vast a debt. Not only did they discover the alcoholic ferment of yeast, but they had to exercise a wise selection in picking it out from others, and giving it special prominence. Place an old boot in a moist place, or expose common paste or a pot of jam to the air; it soon becomes coated with a blue-green mould, which is nothing else than the fructification of a little plant called Penicillium glauc.u.m. Do not imagine that the mould has sprung spontaneously from boot, or paste, or jam; its germs, which are abundant in the air, have been sown, and have germinated, in as legal and legitimate a way as thistle-seeds wafted by the wind to a proper soil. Let the minute spores of Penicillium be sown in a fermentable liquid, which has been previously so boiled as to kill all other spores or seeds which it may contain; let pure air have free access to the mixture; the Penicillium will grow rapidly, striking long filaments into the liquid, and fructifying at its surface. Test the infusion at various stages of the plant's growth, you will never find in it a trace of alcohol. But forcibly submerge the little plant, push it down deep into the liquid, where the quant.i.ty of free oxygen that can reach it is insufficient for its needs, it immediately begins to act as a ferment, supplying itself with oxygen by the decomposition of the sugar, and producing alcohol as one of the results of the decomposition. Many other low microscopic plants act in a similar manner. In aerated liquids they flourish without any production of alcohol, but cut off from free oxygen they act as ferments, producing alcohol exactly as the real alcoholic leaven produces it, only less copiously. For the right apprehension of all these facts we are indebted to Pasteur.

In the cases. .h.i.therto considered, the fermentation is proved to be the invariable correlative of life, being produced by organisms foreign to the fermentable substance. But the substance itself may also have within it, to some extent, the motive power of fermentation. The yeast-plant, as we have learned, is an a.s.semblage of living cells; but so at bottom, as shown by Schleiden and Schwann, are all living organisms. Cherries, apples, peaches, pears, plums, and grapes, for example, are composed of cells, each of which is a living unit. And here I have to direct your attention to a point of extreme interest.

In 1821, the celebrated French chemist, Berard, established the important fact that all ripening fruit, exposed to the free atmosphere, absorbed the oxygen of the atmosphere and liberated an approximately equal volume of carbonic acid. He also found that when ripe fruits were placed in a confined atmosphere, the oxygen of the atmosphere was first absorbed, and an equal volume of carbonic acid given out. But the process did not end here. After the oxygen had vanished, carbonic acid, in considerable quant.i.ties, continued to be exhaled by the fruits, which at the same time lost a portion of their sugar, becoming more acid to the taste, though the absolute quant.i.ty of acid was not augmented. This was an observation of capital importance, and Berard had the sagacity to remark that the process might be regarded as a kind of fermentation.

Thus the living cells of fruits can absorb oxygen and breathe out carbonic acid, exactly like the living cells of the leaven of beer.

Supposing the access of oxygen suddenly cut off, will the living fruit-cells as suddenly die, or will they continue to live as yeast lives, by extracting oxygen from the saccharine juices round them?

This is a question of extreme theoretic significance. It was first answered affirmatively by the able and conclusive experiments of Lechartier and Bellamy, and the answer was subsequently confirmed and explained by the experiments and the reasoning of Pasteur. Berard only showed the absorption of oxygen and the production of carbonic acid; Lechartier and Bellamy proved the production of alcohol, thus completing the evidence that it was a case of real fermentation, though the common alcoholic ferment was absent.

So full was Pasteur of the idea that the cells of a fruit would continue to live at the expense of the sugar of the fruit, that once in his laboratory, while conversing on these subjects with M. Dumas, he exclaimed, 'I will wager that if a grape be plunged into an atmosphere of carbonic acid, it will produce alcohol and carbonic acid by the continued life of its own cells--that they will act for a time like the cells of the true alcoholic leaven.' He made the experiment, and found the result to be what he had foreseen. He then extended the 'enquiry. Placing under a bell-jar twenty-four plums, he filled the jar with carbonic acid gas; beside it he placed twenty-four similar plums uncovered. At the end of eight days, he removed the plums from the jar, and compared them with the others. The difference was extraordinary. The uncovered fruits had become soft, watery, and very sweet; the others were firm and hard, their fleshy portions being not at all watery. They had, moreover, lost a considerable quant.i.ty of their sugar. They were afterwards bruised, and the juice was distilled. It yielded six and a half grammes of alcohol, or one per cent. of the total weight of the plums. Neither in these plums, nor in the grapes first experimented on by Pasteur, could any trace of the ordinary alcoholic leaven be found. As previously proved by Lechartier and Bellamy, the fermentation was the work of the living cells of the fruit itself, after air had been denied to them. When, moreover, the cells were destroyed by bruising, no fermentation ensued. The fermentation was the correlative of a vital act, and it ceased when life was extinguished.

Luedersdorf was the first to show by this method that yeast acted, not, as Liebig had a.s.sumed, in virtue of its organic, but in virtue of its organised character. He destroyed the cells of yeast by rubbing them on a ground gla.s.s plate, and found that with the destruction of the organism, though its chemical const.i.tuents remained, the power to act as a ferment totally disappeared.

One word more in reference to Liebig may find a place here. To the philosophic chemist thoughtfully pondering these phenomena, familiar with the conception of molecular motion, and the changes produced by the interactions of purely chemical forces, nothing could be more natural than to see in the process of fermentation a simple ill.u.s.tration of molecular instability, the ferment propagating to surrounding molecular groups the overthrow of its own tottering combinations. Broadly considered, indeed, there is a certain amount of truth in this theory; but Liebig, who propounded it, missed the very kernel of the phenomena when he overlooked or contemned the part played in fermentation by microscopic life. He looked at the matter too little with the eye of the body, and too much with the spiritual eye. He practically neglected the microscope, and was unmoved by the knowledge which its revelations would have poured in upon his mind.

His hypothesis, as I have said, was natural--nay it was a striking ill.u.s.tration of Liebig's power to penetrate and unveil molecular actions; but it was an error, and as such has proved an ignis fatuus instead of a pharos to some of his followers.

I have said that our air is full of the germs of ferments differing from the alcoholic leaven, and sometimes seriously interfering with the latter. They are the weeds of this microscopic garden which often overshadow and choke the flowers. Let us take an ill.u.s.trative case.