How the Body Works : The Small Intestine

How the Body Works : The Small Intestine

Testing Urine and Saliva pH

We are receiving many questions on how
to best monitor the pH of the saliva and urine.

Here is how to test your own pH..........

The pH Miracle Living Acid/Alkaline Saliva and Urine Test:

1. First, upon waking test your saliva with the pHydrion paper. When you get out of bed, lick and wet the end of a pHydrion test strip with your saliva. Note the color change and write down the pH number.

Do this before brushing your teeth, drinking, smoking, or even thinking of eating any food.
The optimum saliva pH should be 7.2.

2. Next, test your first urine of the morning.
This is urine that has been stored in your bladder during the night that is ready to be eliminated when you get up. You need to pee on a strip of pHydrion paper, note the color change and write down the pH number.

The first urine should run optimally at 7.2 of greater.

If your first urine pH is lower than 7.2 you are deficient in alkaline buffers and need to move to a more alkaline diet rich in fresh green vegetables and fruits. If your first urine pH is higher than 7.2 your alkaline buffers are sufficient to neutralize the acidic foods and drinks you ingested the day before.

To increase urine pH which is a direct indicator of tissue pH take 3 tsp. of pHour salts in 4 to
6 ounces of purified water.

To balance the pH of the urine you need to move away from acidic foods and drinks and begin ingesting liberal amounts of electron rich green vegetables, low sugar fruits and healthy polyunsaturated fats. I call this way of eating and drinking the cows program which stands for chlorophyll, oil/oxygen, water and salts.

3. Next, test your second morning urine before eating any food. This number should be the pH of your second urine after you have eliminated the acid load from the day before.

The acids should be gone the second time you go to the bathroom so your urine pH should be ideally 7.2 or higher.

If the pH is lower than 7.2 then you are in a state of latent tissue acidosis and you are deficient in alkaline buffers such as sodium, potassium, magnesium and calcium bicarbonate.

The lower pH is also indicative of a diet high in protein and an increase in acids from proteins including nitric, sulfuric, phosphoric and uric acids. Eliminate from the diet proteins from beef, chicken, turkey, pork and fish to normalize pH at 7.2 while eating liberal amounts of green foods and green drinks, healthy polyunsaturated fats and alkaline mineral salts, like pHour salts.

4. For breakfast eat an avocado soup, vegetable soup, the healing soup or drink some fresh almond milk or a fresh green drink. Wait five minutes and then check your urine and saliva again. Write these pH numbers down also. The pH numbers will go up from the first and second morning urine and saliva if you have sufficient alkaline reserves to buffer acids. If you do not then the pH numbers will show very little change or even go down from the early morning pH numbers.

5. Make sure you check your urine and saliva pH between meals, i.e., between breakfast and lunch and between lunch and dinner. The pH should always be between
7.2 to 8.4, right after meals and 7.2 a couple of hours after meals.

The five tests above show the following:

1. The efficiency of the digestive or alkaline buffering system to deal with what you ate the night before, i.e., the first and second AM urine and saliva pH.
These numbers will change from day to day if you are living an eating acidic. When you begin The pH Miracle Living Plan and start eating the COWS Plan you will see the pH of the urine and saliva become more constant and balanced at a pH of 7.2 or higher.

2. How well you treat yourself in general, i.e., how 'strong'
the salivary glands, stomach, pancreas, gallbladder and liver are in dealing with excess acidity. This is once again the AM urine and saliva pH. This number shows the overall state of your health, the condition of the alkaline reserve of your body which reflects the diet you have been eating over the last months and years.

This pH number stays rather constant and will only change after some work has been done in alkalizing and energizing the body as outlined in the pH Miracle books. Since the saliva and urine pH is an indicator of extracellular and interstitial pH, saliva and urine pH readings should never be below the pH of the sodium bicarbonate buffer system, 7.2. (See below).

The most accurate readings of saliva and urine pH is recorded immediately upon awakening--after sleeping at least five hours and before brushing your teeth.

It is during sleep that the body removes waste and is in an anabolic state restoring and replenishing the body.
For example, if you have a saliva or urine pH of 5.5 and only 5.6 after eating, you know that you are deficient in alkaline reserve and your body is devoid of the minerals necessary to process food properly -- your body cannot adequately respond to the physiological crisis of handling food or drink that is acidic.

3. The pH of your saliva and urine after you eat or drink gives you an indication of your alkaline mineral reserves and your body's ability to deal with the acid residues created from the digestion of that food or drink. It is normal for your pH number to increase after you eat or drink not stay static or decrease.
This once again indicates your inability to deal with acid, the deficiency of alkaline reserves and the buildup of latent tissue acidosis.

Even if you think of a food like an avocado or a lemon the pH of your saliva should increase by a whole point or ten times. This simple test indicates you have sufficient alkaline reserve minerals to pull into your alimentary canal to begin the alkaline buffering process.

The ideal urine and saliva pH pattern is 7.2 on awakening, 7.2 before eating and 7.2 to 8.5 following any alkaline meal or drink.

A simple test can be done at most any time of the day by eating a few almonds.

This will check the adequacy of the alkaline reserve of the body. When a healthy person with adequate alkaline reserves eats a few almonds, the saliva pH almost immediately goes up to a pH of 8.4.
The more acidic the food that is eaten, the more rapid the response of the alkaline reserve, and the higher the saliva pH should be following a meal.

4. The pH of the saliva and urine between meals should be kept in the basic range, pH 7.2 or higher.
After one eats, the stomach releases its necessary sodium bicarbonate to help alkalize the food. While doing this, it makes an equivalent amount of base or baking soda, sodium bicarbonate, that is picked up by the blood stream and delivered to the alkaline glands of the body, the saliva, the pancreas, the gallbladder, the pylorus glands in the stomach and the liver. The maximum amount of base in the blood and therefore in the urine and saliva occurs one to two hours after you eat.

This rhythm of the acid and base flow of the body is called by Frederick F. Sander, the Base-floods and the Base-tides of the Acid-Base household.

This information was first published in 1930, by Frederick F. Sander, a German scientist, in a book called, The Acid-Base Household of the Human Organism and its cooperation with the nail circulation and the rhythm of the Liver.

In his book he states that the body fluids and therefore the urine is most acid at 2:00 A.M.
(pH 5.0 to 6.8) in the morning (the base tide) and most alkaline at 2:00 P.M. (pH 7.0 to 8.5) in the afternoon (base flood).

'The ideal pH numbers depend on the time of day.
Plotted on a curve it looks like the double hump of the back of a camel. Two times a day the urine should be alkaline and that is the top of the humps and corresponds to 10 A.M. and 2 P.M., the alkaline tide after meals. During the rest of the day the pH should be between 6.8 and 7.2. This is optimal urine. The first urine in the morning should be more acidic because of the decalcification that takes place during the night in neutralizing excess acids.'

If all the acids generated in a day from digestion, respiration, metabolism, degeneration, emotions, and toxic environments are not all flushed out during the night they accumulate, day after day. The results are the expression of states of imbalance as the body desperately tries to maintain the alkaline fluid pH at 7.365. The day to day buildup of acids affects each of us differently depending on our genetics, lifestyle and diet.

I have found that acids settle in the weakest parts of the body and if not eliminated through the bowels, urinary system, lungs or skin, acids are then bound to fat and stored on our hips, thighs, stomach, breasts and brain. Bottom-line acids are the expression of all symptomologies and the direct cause of ALL sickness and disease.

Monitoring your saliva and urine pH puts the responsibility of caring for your health back into your hands. Measuring the saliva and urine pH guides your therapy and shows you how living, eating and drinking determines the quality and quantity of your life.

You should monitor your saliva and urine each day for at least 12 weeks or until you establish your balanced pH at 7.2. Once you have established a balanced saliva and urine pH at 7.2 or higher you can reduce the number of tests to once a day or
2 to 3 times a week.

Health Tip: Living With Lactose Intolerance

(HealthDay News) - Lactose intolerance makes it difficult for someone to digest a type of sugar found in milk and other dairy products.

Here are suggestions, courtesy of the Nemours Foundation, to help a child who is lactose-intolerant:

• Try consuming dairy products in moderation.
• Try cheese and yogurt, which may be easier for lactose-intolerant children to digest than milk.
• Try lactose-free or lactose-reduced milk.
• Try a lactose enzyme supplement before eating dairy products, to help the body digest lactose.
• Try eating dairy products along with non-dairy foods, which may help ease digestion.
• Try getting extra calcium in the form of calcium-fortified juices, broccoli, beans, tofu and soy milk.

The Cleansing Diet

Healing the liver can be helped through the use of foods friendly to the organ and a diet that contributes to overall health. By: Kerri Buckley “There are two ways to clean a dirty water glass,” my teacher observed, with the studied deliberation that told me he was going to say something simple but with vast implications. “The first is to turn it upside down and wash it out.”

He paused for me to digest what he’d said. “The second is to let fresh water run into it, fill it, and overflow—continuously running in and out over a long period of time.” Then he asked, “Which do you think works best?” I hesitated, suspecting it was a setup.

Before I could venture a reply, he volunteered, “You think it’s the first, the emptying and the washing, but it’s not. The gradual approach is more thorough in the long run.” — From Radical Healing by Rudolph Ballentine, M.D. Facing a diagnosis or treatment plan for an illness like hepatitis C can be overwhelming because with that diagnosis or symptoms of this serious condition also comes a feeling of powerlessness over your body and ultimately over your life.Hepatitis C is a complicated and insidious virus involving much more than just the liver, and there are many things to educate yourself about.

You’ll have decisions to make about your treatment plan. Will you choose traditional therapy and interferon, alternative treatments, or a combination of both? As a certified chef who has been working with the special diet population for 20 years, I find that people truly heal best when they have hope and when they feel as if they themselves are most responsible for their own health. They adopt the attitude that their practitioners are partners in their healing journey, and they choose the therapies and healers that work best for them.

Clean Up Your Diet One thing that is dramatic in both empowering people and bringing rapid, physical relief is a cleansing diet. A gentle and consistent cleanse with foods not only takes the load off the liver to process food, it improves digestion, cleans the lymphatic system, and energizes and strengthens the immune system. It can be used with both traditional and alternative medicine. A competent cleansing program will include enzyme therapy, alkalize the body with vegetables, cleanse all the toxins from the body, and help restructure the body’s defenses. The drastic improvement in well-being offers hope, and hope is the spark that ignites the process of healing.

There is an emerging group of doctors who are blazing a trail in a new methodology of healing. They are medical doctors, naturopaths, chiropractors, and biologists. There are centers around the country that deal with cleansing the body of toxins, such as the Hippocrates Institute in Florida, Bastyr University’s Hepatitis C Clinic north of Seattle, the Gonzalez clinic in New York, and the Martha’s Vineyard Holistic Retreat.

These centers are producing miracles, and practitioners of all kinds are following the advice of this new breed of physician—physicians like research biologist Robert Young, naturopathic doctor Hulda Clark, Dr. Rudolph Ballentine, author of Radical Healing, and Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez, known for his break with conventional medicine in treating cancer patients and others with chronic diseases with methods like coffee enemas and enzyme therapy.

The advice they share is not new—Hippocrates advocated a plant-based diet 2,500 years ago, along with pure water, sunshine, rest, and fresh air. He believed that the body would heal itself if nurtured with these conditions. What is new is the level of research. It takes physics and microbiology to a very new and exciting level—one that can help patients with chronic illnesses.

How Your Body Cleanses To understand how a cleanse works, you should have a basic understanding of how the body cleanses itself. It is a miraculous process. Our bodies cleanse primarily through the colon, skin, lungs, and bladder. Assisting these four primary ways of elimination are the liver, kidneys, and lymphatic system.

The liver is responsible for most of the body’s detoxification. It processes and converts the body’s fuel supply from foods. It breaks down fats and detoxifies substances like alcohol, nicotine, caffeine, pesticides on produce, drugs, antibiotics, unfiltered water, chemicals, and additives in processed foods. If the liver is overworked or not functioning properly, it can’t convert toxins into waste matter for elimination, and you can end up literally poisoning yourself—a process called autointoxication.

The liver is the organ with the most enzyme systems, and it is enzymes that enable it to do its job well. Factors that stress the liver are improper digestion (a result of eating cooked and processed foods), yeast overgrowth, parasites, fats in the diet, dehydration, and inadequate water intake. Clark, author of The Cure For All Diseases says, “One-hundred percent of all cancer patients have parasites in the liver.

Cleansing the liver is the most powerful procedure you can do to improve your body’s health.” She says you must also cleanse the body by getting rid of all toxins in the body, including amalgam and polluted water—that is, water with heavy metals or PCBs. After following her protocol at her clinic for two to three weeks, she says, “Patients simply don’t have the virus present in their bodies anymore.” Watching Your pH A program that cleanses the liver removes those substances from a diet that would normally require the liver to work harder.

This means adding live enzymes to the diet rather than depleting them from the liver and alkalizing the body. Both goals are accomplished with fresh, organic vegetables. Young says, “There is only one illness, one disease—and that disease is improper pH balance in the body due to an acidic environment. You cannot separate disease from acidity.”

He goes on to say, “Our health can be measured in only one way, whether our tissues are more acidic in pH or more alkaline. The body becomes acidic by our eating, drinking, and thinking.” According to his research, when the body utilizes food at the cellular level, it leaves an ash that is either acid or alkaline in nature. If the ash is alkaline, it is easily handled by the body and used for fuel-energy and repair. If it is acidic, it acts as a toxin, and the stress placed upon the body leads towards decline and eventual disease.

When the tissues in the body are alkaline, microbes within the body are inert or they regenerate and repair, but when tissues are acidic they take on the natural role of decomposing the body. The body becomes diseased. The average American diet is mostly acidic. Foods that are acidic are meats, soft drinks, yeasted breads, coffee, tea, cheeses, dairy products, sugars, most fruits, and all fried and junk food. Foods that are alkaline are vegetables and legumes.

With regard to any disease of the liver, including cancer and hepatitis, Young says, “In an alkaline environment, the liver is capable of regenerating itself—in six weeks you can have a brand new liver.” He compares our bodies to that of a fish in a fishbowl. “The fish is only as sick as the water it lives in,” Young says. “If you change the water in a fishbowl, the fish gets well. Since our bodies are 70 percent fluid, changing the fluid environment changes our health, and you do that with your foods, drinks, and thinking.”

The Internal Environment Lloyd Katz, a chiropractic doctor in Amherst, Va., agrees. “Louis Pasteur was on his deathbed when he admitted that the terrain is more important than the bug. Our diet is essentially everything we take into our body—food, drink, air, our thoughts, even what we watch on television.” Dr. Katz says he has seen people who had to be carried in to treatment and had lost hair due to chemotherapy and were “as weak as kittens” regain their health in only weeks from raw foods and wheat grass enemas. “It is truly amazing what the body is able to do when cleansed and provided with the right environment.”

Proper digestion is essential for a healthy liver and begins in the mouth with the enzymes produced by the chewing process. As we age, our stomachs are less capable of producing the enzymes that help break down food. All enzymes in foods are destroyed above 117 degrees Fahrenheit. Without enzymes, proteins (amino acids) are difficult to digest. Keeping the colon clean is essential for a cleanse.

This is accomplished by adding fiber to your diet, drinking lots of water, chewing everything well, and taking at least a brisk walk every day. Some people might benefit by seeing a colon therapist. Jeremy Rodrock, a chiropractic doctor from Baldwin City, Kan., concentrates on digestion as a way to improve immunity with his patients who have HCV. “Mainstream treatments for hepatitis C suppress the immune system,” he says. “I usually recommend raw fruits and vegetables for the antioxidants and the fiber.

I also tell my patients to avoid all ‘white’ foods—anything with white flour or any product that has been bleached. White foods tend to have chemicals because they are processed.” Michael Taylor is a biologist and microscopist—he looks closely at blood samples of people to determine what kind of microbes are present in the body. He says there is a whole new vocabulary necessary with this new thought of “bio-ecology.”

Taylor says the most important thing a person with HCV can do is “realize the body strives to heal itself daily. Remove the things supporting the microbes within the terrain, and replace it with whole foods as a supplement to rebalance.” He also stressed that you should recognize denial or resistance to change and eliminate it.

Foods For Health A cleanse should consist of mostly raw foods, simple proteins, such as beans and legumes, whole grains, fish, and lots of pure water. Cleansing will starve the overgrowth of yeast present and balance the body’s pH through foods that alkalize. Raw foods are freshly harvested foods that are not cooked or processed in any way. These foods are packed with fully functioning enzymes that help your body with digestion. For disease prevention, five servings of vegetables a day are recommended by such organizations as the American Dietetic Association and American Cancer Society.

Through Dr. Young’s research, it is easy to understand why. He advocates an 80/20 ratio of raw foods to cooked foods. You can get four to five servings of vegetables in two cups of freshly juiced vegetables. Buying a juicer is the best investment you can make in your health, he says. Wheat grass juice is an excellent cleanser.

Don’t stop with the juice, however. Eat small and frequent meals to keep your calorie intake up and add more vegetables, raw or lightly steamed—like zucchini, braised cabbage, or fresh tomato and cucumber salad—along with green drinks, whole grains, and plant-based sources of protein, such as beans, chickpeas, soy, and nuts.

Use herbs and spices liberally. Avoid sugar and even most fruits when you cleanse, because the sugar causes a yeast overgrowth and makes you crave more sugar. Breads with yeast should be avoided, but sprouted breads are available at health food stores and flatbreads are easy to make. Stevia can be used in place of other sweeteners and does not contribute to the growth of yeast. Include essential fatty acids such as flaxseed oil.

Avoid caffeine. Grain coffee tastes similar and does not affect the body’s pH the way that coffee does. Herb teas are wonderful, especially mate and lapacho. Nut milks are delicious, easy to make, and great for cleansing. Include lots of fresh water—the rule is one ounce of purified water per pound of body weight. Green powders also are fabulous for the liver. Smoothies made from soy or rice milk, green powders, protein powder, and natural flavorings satisfy your cravings while keeping up your protein intake.

The green powders are easy to digest and are full of enzymes. Smoothies are fast and easy to make, and they go a long way in helping your body cleanse and rebuild. The Natural Way To Eat The Hippocrates Institute in Florida is known for its persistent and steadfast education on raw foods. General manager Reenie Brewer says, “I see miracles here every day.

People come in with walkers and canes, and they get well. It’s all accomplished through their efforts to stop putting into their bodies the things that don’t belong there and replace them with the things that do.” If you are used to meat and potatoes or daily fast food, a cleansing diet will be very different. It is, in fact, a most natural way to eat.

It is time for us to learn to eat to live instead of living to eat. This is not really a diet, but a process. It is a choice to be proactive in improving your own health, immunity, and energy levels. People often ask how long they should eat this way.

It should be slow, gradual, and consistent—a lifelong process. You don’t have to declare yourself a vegetarian to benefit from a diet that is 80 percent raw. If you find yourself feeling much better, you won’t mind getting creative with veggies, grains, and legumes. There are cookbooks on raw foods that contain recipes for raw, enzyme rich, dehydrated foods.

You can even make bread and pizza this way. As you cleanse the body and starve the yeast, you may find that you no longer crave sugar, hamburgers, and coffee. Below you’ll find some recipes that will help you cleanse, will alkalize your body, and are rich in enzymes.

To your health, to your liver, and to hope!
Kerri Buckley is a freelance writer and certified chef from Ocean Shores, Wash.
This article came from HEPATITIS MAGAZINE© 2002
The pH Miracle Center

more info: http://www.dreddyclinic.com/diet/alcaline/alk_diet.htm

CHAPTER II.:The Blood and the Third Anatomical Element by Antoine Bechamp

ON THE ACTUAL SPECIFIC INDIVIDUALITY OF THE ALBUMINOID PROXIMATE PRINCIPLES. THE ALBUMINOIDS. THE PHENOMENON OF COAGULATION. THE ALBUMINOIDS OF THE FIBRIN. THE ALBUMINOIDS OF THE SERUM. HAEMOGLOBIN. HAEMOGLOBIN AND OXYGENATED WATER

To solve the problem of the spontaneous coagulation of the blood, it is necessary to know not only the three anatomical elements of this humor, but also the composition of the medium in the midst whereof they live, because there are to be found united the conditions of their existence.
Let us admit—what will be proven—that, in accordance with the hypothesis of Hewson, of Milne Edwards and of Dumas, fibrin does not exist dissolved in the blood, and further that it is connected with what we have called fibrinous microzymas. We then recognize that the really liquid part of the blood contains all its components, including therein the albuminoids, in a state of perfect solution, as in the serum separated from the clot.
In 1815 it was supposed that the serum of the blood contained albumin as the only albuminoid matter, and this was not only identified with the white of an egg, but with the albumen of the serous fluid of the pericardium and of the ventricles of the brain, with chyle, and even with pathological serous fluids: such as that of dropsy, of blisters, etc.1 And these identifications were based solely upon a single character, coagulation.
1. Thenard, Traite de chimie, Vol. III, p. 432 (1815).
Even to-day it is contended that two solutions contain the same albumin when they are coagulable at about the same temperature. But the phenomenon of coagulation has been so abused that it has become necessary to define it accurately.
The phenomenon of coagulation. At first the term coagulation was applied to the passage of the blood from a liquid to a solid state, in the same sense that one said of a liquid which solidified, of a vapor which condensed into a liquid,—that it coagulated. Fourcroy said of the white of egg, of the blood serum, etc., that they are concresciblea by the application of heat because they contain albumin. But in process of time, to the notion of coagulability, chemists added that of insolubility; to coagulate became for the albuminoids the correlative to becoming insoluble. For instance, when the white of egg forms into a solid mass in a hard boiled egg, it is said to have coagulated, to have become at once solidified and insoluble throughout; but as will be seen presently it is not so with the blood when that is said to be spontaneously coagulated.
a. [Obsolete; from the Latin concrescere, to grow together, hence to solidify.—Trans.]
When coagulation was thus strictly defined in a chemical sense, the insolubility of the coagulated substance was only considered relatively to water as the solvent; solubility before coagulation was also relative to water. But we shall see that the idea should be completed by extending it to other solvents.
In the present state of science, for instance, the name fibrin is given not only to that which I have just studied, that of the blood, the general phlebotomy of adults, but also to that of the arterial or venous blood, without regard to the region of the vascular system from which it is taken, without distinction as to age; that of the chyle, that of the lymph or even of pathological serosities. And this fibrin was regarded as coagulated albumin without regard to the special action of fibrin upon oxygenated water, nor, as we shall see, of its own coagulability.
A rapid review of the history of albuminoid matters will enable us to understand how, in 1875, it came to be supposed that fibrin was only a stage in the transformation or alterations of albumin.
Under the influence of Gay-Lussac and of Thenard, of Mulder and of Dumas, chemists had admitted a certain number of nitrogenous matters of animal or vegetable origin as specific, not only when they were a little different, but even apparently identical in their centesimal elementary composition. These matters Dumas called "neutral nitrogenized matters of the organization," recalling thereby an old classification of Thenard. At last they were called albuminoids, comparing them to albumen, or white of egg, taken for a type, because of certain common properties and of some resemblances in composition. The notion of specificity prevailed up to 1840; after that, in spite of Berzelius, the singular idea of the substantial unity of these substances seemed to prevail. This is how it came about.
It will be remembered that Bouchardat gave the name of albuminose to the fibrinous matter dissolved by very dilute hydrochloric acid. The reason for the invention of this new word is a curious one. Biot had observed that the watery solution of the white of egg deviated the plane of polarization of polarized light to the left; Bouchardat, having found that the hydrochloric solution of fibrin also deviated the same plane of polarization to the left, concluded that "as the soluble principle of fibrin is identical with the dominant matter of the albumen of the egg, I propose for this pure substance the name of albuminose." Then dissolving in very dilute hydrochloric acid various other analogous substances and observing the same results in solutions thus obtained, he generalized as follows: "The fundamental principle found in the fibrin, in the albumen of egg, in the serum of blood, in the gluten of cereals, in casein, is always the same; it is albuminose, mixed or combined sometimes with earthy matters, phosphates of lime and of magnesia, sometimes with alkaline salts, sometimes with fatty matters, which mask their essential properties. If this ephemeral combination be destroyed by a really inappreciable proportion of acid, the albuminose solution is then found with identical properties, exactly similar chemical reactions, similar action on polar­ized light, always deviating to the left, the energy whereof, other things equal, is always proportioned to the weight of the substance dissolved.1
The above amounts to saying that the albumen of the white of egg, that of serum, the essential matter of gluten, of casein and of fibrin, are the same substance, possessing the same rotatory power.
We shall see how, even as to fibrin, to what extent the observation of Bouchardat was superficial and how he deceived himself in generalizing it. He deceived himself so strangely that he did not think for a moment that he had to do with hydrochloric combinations, believing that the quantity of hydrochloric acid of his solvent was inappreciable, etc. The chemists were equally careless. Ch. Gerhardt adopted Bouchardat's point of view and extended it.2 In Germany, especially, a legion of chemists maintained the substantial identity of these matters; P. Schutzenberger (a native of Holland, domiciled in France) adopted it. It was because they knew very little about the chemical constitution of albumen; so little that Ch. Gerhardt consigned albuminoid matters to a place below asphaltes and bitumens, and that in the general confusion M. Naquet thought that albuminoid substances did not belong to the domain of chemistry, but to that of physiology, as remains of organs.
But in 1856, while I was busied with the researches which resulted in the discovery of the microzymas, in a work on the source of urea in the organism,3 by arguments drawn
1. C. R.. Vol. XIV, pp. 966-967 (1842).2. Ch. Gerhardt, "Traite de chimie organique." Vol. IV, p. 436 (1856).3. "Essai sur les substances albuminoides et sur leur transformation en l'uree." These de la Faculte de medecine de Strasbourg. (2d S.). No. 376 (1856).
as much from chemistry as from physiology, I had maintained the specific plurality of the albuminoids and demonstrated that these substances, animal and vegetable alike, produce urea by decomposition following a phenomenon of oxydation. In this work I succeeded in expressing the chemical constitution of albumin and of the albuminoids in general, regarded as proximate principles. I showed that their molecules were very complex, the most complex known, inasmuch as formed of numerous non-complex molecules of the fatty and aromatic series, among which were amide derivatives, amides and sulphides, in the number whereof urea was never wanting, so that if the ureides of M. Grimaux had been known I should have said that albumin is a very complex ureide. In this work I laid the foundation for the future researches which led me to the discovery that the albuminoid matters, even those regarded as proximate principles, are either mixtures, like the albumin of white of egg, or organized things, like fibrin and vitellin. The researches whereby I demonstrated analytically that there are a great number of natural albumins and albuminoids, reducible to rigorously defined proximate principles, were made the subject of examination by a commission of the Academy of Sciences and of a report by J. B. Dumas.1 It was in the memoir which is the subject of this report that is to be found the demonstration of the specific plurality of albuminoid matters, and that the doctrine of their substantial unity is an error.2
1. C. R., Vol. XCIV. The members of the Commission were Milne-Edwards, Peligot, Fremy, Cahours, Dumas reporter.2. "Memoir sur les matirees albuminoides." Recueil des memoires des savants etangers. Vol. XXVIII, No. 3, 516 pages. Imp. Nat.
Among other things, I demonstrated that the classical albumin, the white of egg of the fowl, the type to which had been referred all those matters which were identified under the name of albumin, was a mixture of three proximate principles, irreducible to one another; all three albuminoids, all three soluble and deviating the plane of polarization of light to the left, whereof two are coagulable by heat, the third not coagulable, a veritable zymas. And J. Bechamp, having analyzed, by the same method, the whites of eggs of a number of oviparous animals, birds and reptiles, discovered among them other albumens, other zymases, different from those of the egg of the fowl; so different and differing among themselves that he was able to specify the species of a bird by the albumens of its egg.1
But prejudice and partisanship are so tenacious that nothing was of any avail. Notwithstanding the report of Dumas, long afterwards, a learned physiologist held that fibrin was a proximate principle. He did so in reliance on the opinion of M. Duclaux proclaiming "the extreme mutability of albuminoid matters and the folly of the chemical specifications established in this category of organic substances,2 and again maintained that fibrin was a proximate principle.
1. J. Bechamp, "Nouvelles recherches surlesalbumines normales et pathologiqites." I. B. Bailliere el fils Paris (1887).2. Dastre, C. R-, Vol. XCVIII, p. 959. See on this subject A. Bechamp's Remarks on the note of M. Dastre under the title of "Existe-t-il une digestion sans ferments digestifs des matieres albuminoides?" C. R.. Vol. XCVIII, p. 1157 (1894). M. Dastre saw fibrin disappear, dissolved, in a solution of fluoride of sodium and concluded that it was a digestion.
It is upon such opinions that rests the assurance that fibrin is a stage in the mutations of albumin and that the albumen of milk is a consequence of another change in caseine, as asserted by M. Duclaux. All this is inaccurate and one may even say absolutely untrue, for pure albuminoid matters are fixed and are as rigorously definable and specific as any other proximate principle.
Independently of the ignorance which prevailed touching the chemical constitution of the albuminoids, that which most constributed to perpetuate these prejudices was that so little was known concerning the faculty of the albuminoids to form combinations with bases or acids, that even Dumas had held them to be neutral nitrogenous matters. It is true that Bouchardat said that they form combinations with the alkalies and alkaline earths, but said that such combinations were only ephemeral. Thenard admitted the formation of combinations with hydrochloric and sulphuric acids, but no one paid any further attention thereto. Lieberkuhn regarded the albumen of the white of egg as an albuminate of soda, but said also that casein was an albuminate of potash, etc. These kinds of combinations, under the hypothesis of substantial unity, served to explain the differences presented by these matters, compared with one another, as being soluble or insoluble. What is certain is that, at least in the animal organism, albuminoid matters are always combined with an alkali or an alkaline earth, and that further these combinations are complicated by the presence of phosphatic earths, which they dissolve. And as if to augment the confusion and force of prejudice, natural coagulations were admitted, at the same time that the insolubility of fibrin was sought to be explained by its combinations with phosphates, it was called coagulated albumen; as to the soluble albuminoids, to differentiate them they invoked coagulation by heat; those which coagulated at the same temperature were regarded as identical; casein was said to be insoluble by heat, but coagulable by acids, thus confounding a purely chemical phenomenon of precipitation with a physical phenomenon, etc.
My researches have solidly established that from those natural materials which always constitute mixtures there can be separated by means of analysis the albuminoids, proximate principles, which when isolated have an acid reaction and which unite with bases in as definite proportions as any acid, so that casein produces with sodium a neutral caseinate, and a bicaseinate, which reddens litmus paper. I also demonstrated that these substances can form combinations with hydrochloric acid and with acetic acid in several proportions. From these various combinations the albuminoid matter, whether soluble or insoluble, can always be isolated with its own proper characters and always with the same rotatory power.
But the natural albuminoid matters, even when reduced to proximate principles isolated from bases and other min­eral matters with which they had been combined or mixed, are neither crystallizable, volatile nor fusible; they possess then none of the so-called constant characters employed by chemists to ascertain at once their purity and identity. How then can one make sure that the substance isolated by analysis is always identical with itself? I employed for a constant the rotatory powers employed for a like purpose by Bouchardat with the substances studied by him.
The following table gives the rotatory powers of the chief albuminoid matters on which Bouchardat experimented and disposes of the theory of the substantial unity of these matters. In the table the numbers are relative to the perceptible tint according to Biot.
We will now see how it is with a solution of blood-fibrin in very dilute hydrochloric acid.
The hydrochloric solution of fibrin, separated from its rnicrozymas, contains a mixture of albuminoid matters, soluble and insoluble in water.
The limpid solution, which has been obtained with or without the addition of phenol, has a decided acid reaction and is without action on oxygenated water. The solution is really one of hydrochloric combinations with albuminoid matters, whereof the greater part is insoluble in water. In fact, on the addition of dilute ammonia so that the liquor becomes faintly alkaline, an abundant dead white flocculent precipitate is produced which, collected on a filter, well washed with distilled water, with alcohol and with ether and rapidly dried in a dry vacuum, forms a pulverulent matter. Was this the whole of the fibrin less its microzymas? If yes, the fibrin is purely and simply dissolved; if no, the solution was the result of a reaction. The alternative will be determined by dosing.
A manipulation of 60 grammes of fresh fibrin contain­ing 11.5 gr. of matter dried at 100° C. furnished 7.6 gr. of this insoluble matter likewise dried at 100° C.; that is to say, only 66 per cent, of the weight of dry fibrin; consequently 34 per cent, of matter remained in solution. If the reaction is continued longer before separating the microzymas, the quant­ity of matter precipitated by the ammonia diminishes, while the dissolved portion increases.
The substance insoluble in water—the ammonia precipitates—possesses further the same elementary composition as fibrin, but it differs from the intermicrozymian substance in that it is directly soluble in very dilute hydro­chloric acid, as well as in acetic acid and in ammonia. I have given it the name of fibrinine.
Further the fibrinine does not decompose oxygenated water and does not liquify fecula starch.
Among the substances which ammonia does not precipitate is one which alcohol precipitates after the separation of the fibrinine. This precipitate is a mixture; one portion is soluble in water, the other does not redissolve. I have given the name fibrimine. to that portion which is finally soluble in water.
But the part precipitated by alcohol is the smaller part of the material which ammonia does not precipitate; the rest is to be likened, more or less, to the extractives such as are found in gastric digestion; I add that the fibrimine possesses the property of liquifying starch and I regret that I did not think of examining, if it, or some of the compounds accompanying it, has the property of decomposing oxygenated water.
However that may be, the following are the rotatory powers of the hydrochloric solution of the fibrin as a whole, and of that of fibrinine and fibrimine:
Fibrin (from blood of sheep, cow and pig): Rolatory power of the hydrochloric solution of the whole of the fibrin ...................... (a) j = — 72.5°Fibrinine: Rotatory power in hydrochloric solution ........ (a)j — 67°.4Fibrimine: Rotatory power in aqueous solution .................(a) j = — 80°1
A comparison of these various and different rotatory powers, answering to other properties, not less different, of the bodies which possess them, is sufficient to show that the identification made by Bouchardat, which led him to believe that there was a substantial unity among albuminoids, had no foundation in the real nature of things. Nevertheless it
1. To complete these comparisons, in order to give a better understanding of the specific individuality of each albuminoid proximate principle, and to show still further the value of the new method of research, which, for shortness, I call the antiseptic method. I add the following: We know that fibrin, left to itself in carbolated water, changes while dissolving in great pan without becoming fetid, leaving a residue of microzymas enveloped in an insoluble albuminoid atmosphere. In short, while spontaneously transforming, fibrin produces some dissolved materials and others insoluble. The whole of the dissolved portion, albuminoid and others not volatile, had a rotatory power (a)j = — 29" to — 30°, which proves that under these conditions the soluble products are different from those formed in the change on contact with very dilute hydrochloric acid. Among the dissolved products, which together have the above rotatory power, were one zymas and several soluble albuminoids, coagulable by heat and having different rotatory powers in fact, from those of the hydrochloric solution. (See "Memoire sur les matieres albuminoides," p. 425.) More than ten years after the report of Dumas and the publication of my memoir on the albuminoid matters, a learned physiologist, M. A. Dastre, reached the same conclusions on applying the antiseptic method to the study of fibrin. He also found, in effect, that crude fibrin, "in contact with antiseptic salt solutions (fluoride and chloride of sodium) does not merely dissolve, but is transformed" into divers substances called globulines, proteoses, propeptones, peptones, as it does under the influence of gastric juice. M. Dastre found also that the spontaneous transformation of fibrin resulted in the formation of soluble and insoluble products without taking the microzymas into account, and further he generalized by applying the same method to crude albuminoid substances without other distinction, and without specifying the nature of the products formed, for the words, peptone, pro peptone, proteose, globulines, are applied to a great number of very different things. To show this assertion is well founded, here are the rotatory powers of the soluble products of digestion of some albuminoid matters digested by the gastric juice of the dog:
was upon this identification and on the results of elementary analyses made upon mixtures and not on real proximate principles that was based the opinion which regarded fibrin as coagulated albumen, or as a stage in suppoitious changes in the albumen of the white of egg. Although it has been ascertained that this albumen, coagulated or not, did not set free oxygenated water, this enormous difference was disre­garded, as well as the fact which followed the incomplete solution of fibrin in dilute hydrochloric acid, whence it was obvious that fibrin was not a proximate principle. Hence it is not surprising that for a long time muscle fibrin was confounded with that of blood, and that even today the fibrin obtained from blood is regarded as being the same whatever be the animal or part of the vascular systems from which it comes, even also the fibrins of chyle, of the lymph and of pathological serosities. Denis (of Commercy) had already established that certain fibrins of the veinous blood were dissolvable in a solution of saltpetre (nitrate of potash), while others, including fibrins of arterial blood, did not dissolve in it. Estor and I demonstrated that the fibrin of the blood of very young kittens liquified and disappeared in the starch which it had liquified, while its microzymas evolved. On the other hand, I found that the fibrin of ox-blood did not dissolve under the conditions specified by Bouchardat and that it was necessary to employ hydrochloric acid at 3 in the 1,000. In another experiment the fibrin of the blood of a young chicken, treated with hydrochloric acid at a 2 per thousand strength, did not swell up even after remaining a long time in the oven, and at the end of several days the acid had dissolved very little of it, and the liquid hardly produced a precipitate with ammonia. Nevertheless this fibrin decomposed oxygenated water before treatment; it decomposed it also after treatment when the acid had been eliminated by washing with water. In short, to become convinced that fibrin is a much more variable anatomical substance than a definite chemical principle, always the same, it suffices to recall the former observations of Marchal de Calvi, of Magendie, and of Claude Bernard, as well as those of J. Birot and of J. Bechamp.1
We must then erase the fibrins from the list of proximate principles to see in them only what they really are, viz., microzymian false membranes. The intermicrozymian matter of these fibrins is not probably the same in all. However that may be, it is certain that the intermicrozymian matter of the fibrin common to ox or sheep-blood is not coagulated albumin; that it is naturally insoluble, dissolving in very dilute hydrochloric acid only by a sort of auto-digestion, whereof the microzymas it contains furnish the zymas; and not only is it not a coagulated albumen, but it is itself coagulable by heat, becoming incapable of combining with dilute hydrochloric acid and of being thereafter dissolved in it.
In his report to the Academy of Sciences, Dumas did not fail to call the attention of savants to the fact that fibrin owes its property of decomposing oxygenated2 water to that part of it which is insoluble in dilute hydrochloric acid. Shortly after M.M. Paul Bert and P. Regnard published a memoir upon the action of oxygenated water upon organic matters3 which raised delicate historical questions of chemistry and of physiology and of facts which I could not leave unanswered. This reply was the subject of several notes.4
1. See on these subjects "Les Microzymas," pp. 233-258 and J. Bechamp's "Nouvelles Recherches sur les albumines Normales et pathologiques," p. 93. 2. C. R., Vol. XCIV, p. 1276. 3. C. R., Vol. XCIV, p. 1333. 4. ib., p. 1601, etc.
In the communication of M.M. Bert and Regnard, I had chiefly addressed myself to the following assertion: "That the blood even defibrinated, acted with great intensity upon oxygenated water and that this action seemed to be entirely contained in the serum; and, further, that ossein very clearly decomposes oxygenated water."
I observed also that the authors did not distinguish between the expressions organic matters and animal matters, —which was in conformity with the then state of science. But I knew what to believe regarding the fact that defibrinated blood decomposes oxygenated water, and I had ascertained the nature of the proximate principle which was its agent.
And first let us place it beyond doubt that it is not the serum which, in defibrinated blood, has the greatest share in this decomposition. The fresh yellow (citron) serum which is first pressed out of the clot unquestionably sets free oxygen from the oxygenated water, which might be due to morsels of fibrin remaining in suspension. But the same serum, filtered several times upon a filter lined with sulphate of baryta, acts less and less on the oxygenated water without ever entirely ceasing to do so, which is very simply explained by the secre­tion in the serum of the substance which, in the fibrinous microzymas, effects the decomposition; but when the serum begins to be red-colored the action upon oxygenated water is incomparably more energetic, the explanation whereof is as follows:
The defibrinated blood contains the red globules, and these contain the red colouring matter and their own (special) microzymas. Much has been written upon this red matter which has come to be called haemoglobin; and which was at first regarded as being a mixture of a colourless albuminoid matter called globulin and of haematosin. Much has also been written upon haemoglobin up to maintaining that it is not an albuminoid because it contains iron. It was J. B. Dumas who first studied and analyzed the colouring matter of the blood of the globules as an albuminoid prox­imate principle.
I have studied haemoglobin from the same point of view as other albuminoid matters; admitting that it exists combined with potash in the globules, I have succeeded in combining it with the oxide of lead under the form of haemoglobinate. But the haemoglobinate of lead, decomposed by carbonic acid, furnishes soluble haemoglobin in the state of an absolute proximate principle.1
1. C. R., Vol. LXXVIII, p. 850 (1874), and "Memoire sur les Matieres albuminoides," p. 270.
The solution of pure haemoglobin is coagulable by heat and by alcohol; in both cases the coagulum is absolutely insoluble in water. The solution is of deep red colour, the alcoholic coagulum is of a brick red.
Haemoglobin, even coagulated by alcohol, decomposes in the presence of alcoholized ether under the influence of sulphuric acid, into haematosin and a colourless albuminoid matter.
That settled, and to be more precise, and apropos to the communication of M.M. Bert and Regnard, let us recall that Thenard admitted that the action of organic tissues upon oxygenated water was of the same order as that of platinum, etc. Nevertheless he did not fail to point out that while these metals decompose, "an infinite quantity" of oxygenated water, it was not the same with organic tissues and fibrin, some decomposing it for a long time, others for a shorter period. In the first category he placed the tissues of the lung, the liver, the spleen and fibrin newly extracted from the blood; in the second he placed the nails, the fibro-cartilage of the ribs, the tendons, the skin; these, said he, "soon entirely ceased to act," and, much surprised, Thenard sought an explanation of these differences. We will presently learn that the differences pointed out by the illustrious observer related to the different nature of the microzymas of the tissues; meanwhile I will only remark that the most active organic tissues belong to the vascular and respiratory systems. But we must not forget that Thenard took fibrin for an isolated animal matter: that is to say, for a proximate principle of animal origin. Let us then compare the action of fibrin in this respect with that of haemoglobin, which is really an animal proximate principle.
To illustrate: let us take, suppose, 30 grammes of fresh moist fibrin and 6 grammes of fresh moist fibrinous microzymas. In 48 hours the 30 grammes of fibrin will have set free 1,600 c.c. of oxygen from 180 c.c. of water oxygenated to 10.5 volumes of oxygen; that is, 53 c.c. of oxygen per gramme of fresh fibrin or 0.193 grammes dried at 100° C.
In 48 hours the 6 grammes of fibrinous microzymas will have set free 1,000 c.c. of oxygen from 160 c.c. of water oxygenated to 10 volumes of oxygen—i.e., 166 c.c. of oxygen per gramme of moist microzymas or 0.139 gramme, dried at 100° C.
Now as to the haemoglobin. In one experiment 10 c.c. of a solution of this substance, pure, containing 0.338 gramme of matter and 4 c.c. of water oxygenated to 10.5 volumes of oxygen, have set free 30 c.c. of gas in three-quarters of an hour and 34 c.c. in 24 hours. Further, so soon as the disengagement of the gas began, the liquor became cloudy, flocculent matter appeared, and at the end the discoloration was complete. The phenomenon then is correlative to a change and an oxydation, for the oxygenated water being able to set free 42 c.c. of oxygen had only set free 34 c.c. of it; the oxygenated water is, further, almost completely decomposed. If one operates with sufficiently large quantities, heat is developed and carbonic acid mixed with oxygen is set free. As to the other products of the discoloration by oxydation of the haemoglobin they are numerous, and among them albuminoid and other soluble products, and at the same time an insoluble body containing iron. Haemoglobin then, a proximate principle, decomposes oxygenated water, becoming changed in so doing like fibrin and its microzymas; but at equal weights the haemoglobin produces a less disengage­ment of oxygen than they.
That which distinguishes the mode of being of the haemoglobin is that, even coagulated by alcohol and then heated to 120° C. (= 248° F.), it becomes still more discolored in decomposing oxygenated water, with disengagement of oxygen, while cooked fibrin becomes inactive.
But the haemoglobin is reducible into a colorless albuminoid matter and into haematosin; that is to say, into two new proximate principles. Now the colorless albuminoid matter of the decomposition, freed from the sulphuric acid with which it had been combined, does not set free oxygen from oxygenated water. On the other hand, the insol­uble haematosin and oxygenated water react strongly with disengagement of heat and of oxygen mixed with carbonic acid, while, absorbing a part of the oxygen, it is entirely transformed into soluble products. And, what is quite the opposite of what happens with fibrin and fibrinous microzymas, free sulphuric acid does not hamper the reaction.
It is evident from this that the haemoglobin owes lo the ferruginous molecule of haematosin, which is one of the constituent molecules of its own molecule, the property of decomposing oxygenated water, destroying itself by oxydation. And it is thus that certain proximate principles of the fibrinous microzymas and the oxygenated water react, causing the decomposition of the latter with disengagement of oxygen.
Here then are many undisputed proximate principles which act upon oxygenated water after the manner of the organic tissues of which Thenard spoke, and after the manner of fibrin, which is also an organic tissue. It is useful to con­nect the facts relative to haemoglobin and to haematosin with the reciprocal reaction of hydrocyanic acid and of oxy­genated water, to show that they are not isolated facts. Further, Thenard himself observed that oxygenated water of a certain concentration reacted upon cane sugar with disengagement of oxygen and of carbonic acid.
In defibrinated blood it is then especially the haemoglobin of the blood globules which is the agent of the decomposition of oxygenated water; and if the lemon-colored serum (always with little intensity) effects this decomposition, it is because it contains, besides its own albumen, some proximate principle, zymas or other, which is able to do so. In fact the albumen of the serum,1 isolated and pure, is as little endowed with this property as is the white of egg and the colorless albuminoid of the decomposition of haemoglobin.
1. The albumen of the serum! The rotatory power of this albumen has been given in the foregoing table to distinguish it from the albuminoid substances which Bouchardat confounded under the name of albuminose. But its specification is of such importance for an exact knowledge of the blood that it would have deserved a chapter to itself; but thanks to what has preceded, this note will suffice. First, let us remember that Denis (of Commercy) (1856) supposed that the plasmin of the plasma was decomposed, after the bleeding, into concrete fibrin and dissolved fibrin, afterwards called metalbumen. So that, according to this hypothesis, the serum expelled from the clot contains this metalbumen and its own albumin. Denis thought he could verify this hypothesis by isolating from the serum its dissolved fibrin or metalbumen in the following manner: when crystals of a sulphate of magnesia are added to the serum, this salt is dissolved in it and a time comes when the serum is so saturated that no more will be dissolved and a precipitate is formed. It was the substance of this precipitate, insoluble in a saturated solution of sulphate of magnesia—but soluble in water, which was supposed to be dissolved fibrin. One was the more sure of it because, under like conditions, the white of egg. common albumen, gives no precipitate to sulphate of magnesia. Such is the experiment which led to the admission of plasmine and its reduction which would give the metalbumen, which would dissolve in the serum with its own albumen, supposed to be identical with the albumen of while of eggs. But all this is erroneous. The blood contains no plasmin and the serum does not contain two albumins whereof one is metalbumen. In fact, Prof. J. Bechamp, in his "Albumines normales et pathologiques," p. 31, has demonstrated that the precipitate determined in the serum by sulphate of magnesia is the same substance, endowed with the same rotatory power as the serum albumin mentioned in table. Further he proved that certain albumins of the bird's egg are likewise precipitated by sulphate of magnesia, as is known to be the case with certain pathological serosities, but the precipitates thus obtained from these pathological albuminous liquids, also called metalbumens, possess different rotatory powers than those of the albumens of the white of egg of certain birds. Whence the conclusion that there is not a melalbumine or dissolved fibrine. Further the specification does not rest only on the difference in rotatory powers, but on all the properties taken together. But a direct proof will be given that there is nothing in the blood resembling the hypothetical body called plasmin.
This colorless albuminoid of the decomposition of the haemoglobin, by its rotatory power and other properties, is absolutely distinct from the albumins and albuminoids of the table. But the blood globules also contain microzymas which decompose oxygenated water. In studying them it is necessary to observe that the organic tissues which effect this decomposition owe this power especially to their anatomical elements or to some proximate principle secreted by them. In other words, the property of decomposing oxygenated water does not characterize organic tissues or bodies, as was believed by Thenard.
The study of these albuminoids in general, and especially of those of the blood, proves that the nitrogenous inter-microzymian matter of the fibrin is of a special nature, distinct from all other albuminoid matters, especially from the type of albumin which may be coagulated, and that is itself coagulable by heat, becoming thus absolutely insoluble in very dilute hydrochloric acid.1
But the special study of the fibrin which revealed the fibrinous microzymas has taught us nothing with regard tcr the condition of the fibrin in the blood during life, that is to say nothing regarding the relation of the intermicrozymian matter and the microzymas. This will be the subject of the next chapter.
1. To explain how fibrin in its spontaneous changes may give birth to a great number of products of decomposition, it is well to add the following to what I have said as to the complexity of the albuminoid molecule. It is commonly said that albuminoid matter is a nitrogenous quaternary. But I have shown that casein, absolutely free from mineral matter, contains phosphorus, and as the casein in the mammary gland results from the transformation of the albuminoid matters of the blood, it follows that these are also phosphoretted; casein also contains sulphur, which was known, but was supposed to be accidental. Then the haemoglobin contained iron. An albuminoid molecule may thus contain besides carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen, phosphorus, iron and sulphur, seven elements instead of four. I have observed that in the albuminoid matters of the vitellin microzymas the sulphur does not produce sulphuric acid precipitable by baryta when they are oxydized by the hypermanganate of potash; in this it resembles Taurine, "Memoire sur les matieres albuminoides," p. 389.

CHAPTER 7:The Blood and the Third Anatomical Element by Antoine Bechamp

JUSTIFICATION OF THE DOCTRINE THAT THE BLOOD IS A FLOWING TISSUE AND, AS SUCH, SPONTANEOUSLY ALTERABLE. M. PASTEUR AND THE GERMS OF THE AIR. CH. ROBIN AND THE ALTERATION OF THE BLOOD. MICROZYMAS AND SPORES OF SCHIZOMYCETES; MICROZYMAS AND MICROCOCCUS; THE MICROZYMAS AND THE CIRCULATORY SYSTEM; COMPARISON OF THE MICROZYMAS OF THE BLOOD, OF THE MICROZYMAS OF THE CIRCULATORY SYSTEM AND OF THE MICROZYMAS OF OTHER TISSUES. AUTONOMY OF THE MICROZYMAS.
The demonstration that the blood is a flowing tissue, and like it spontaneously alterable, rests entirely upon the discovery of the microzymas, individual living organisms, unsuspected, but existing normally, and, consequently, necessarily as figured elements in all the parts of every living organism, in every cellule of that organism, ab ovo et semine, during the entire duration of its development and of its existence in the physiological condition of perfect health. This discovery has furnished the demonstration that all the tissues and humors are spontaneously alterable, because they contain, inherent in themselves, the agents of their alterability, the microzymas, which by evolution may become vibrios or, in certain fixed conditions, bacteria; all of which has been disputed and even denied.
It is this principle, so conformable to the conception of Bichat regarding the existence of anatomical elements autonomically living, so entirely opposed to the doctrine of a living matter without living figured elements, called proto­plasm or blastema, which I have had to oppose and still oppose against certain savants to justify the fact that the blood is really a tissue and as such spontaneously alterable.
The following is a statement of the starting point of the dispute and of the denial.
The fact of the spontaneous alterability of organic matters under the conditions which Macquer specified was admitted in science as an incontestable truth. I have described, in the first chapter, how this belief had been so generalized, that the spontaneous alteration of all proximate principles (even that of cane sugar) was admitted. But, as I have demonstrated, it is only through the action of germs of the air, whose existence, even notwithstanding the hypothesis of Spallanzani was denied, that this alteration occur­red which had the appearance of being spontanteous. But at the same time that I demonstrated that Macquer was right as regards plants and animals, tissues and humors, I showed that of the three conditions specified by Macquer, suitable humidity, a certain temperature and momentary contact with the air, the first two only were essential, the air and its germs might be entirely suppressed.
M. Pasteur admitted the spontaneous alterability of organic matters in general and explicitly asserted that ferments, beer yeast, lactic yeast, vibrios, were spontaneously born of the albuminoid matter of the broth of sweetened yeast; M. Pasteur, having repeated my experiments, was so convinced that germs do really exist in the air and that he had been mistaken, thenceforward declared that the sole origin of the ferments, vibrios included, was these germs he had previously disregarded, and that consequently these germs were the first cause of the spontaneous alteration of all organic matters without exception. He experimented for the purpose of proving that without the germs of the air unputrefying corpses would accumulate upon the earth and even calculated the consequences of such accumulation. Thence to deny the microzymas and contest the conse­quences of their discovery was but a step which, later, he did not fail to make. In fact his own experiments on milk and on boiled urine, those upon blood and upon raw meat, were made by him, in the ardor of his new conviction for the purpose of combatting the doctrine of spontaneous generation by the same weapons I had employed, and not against the microzymas which I had not yet named. It was only in 1876 that M. Pasteur began to deny and to dispute the facts of the microzymian theory which had been nearly all published in 1871, and since 1874 had been verified and confirmed in France and abroad. But although verified and confirmed they were also interpreted; for the sake of history and comparison it is desirable that these interpretations should be known.
Charles Robin was the first to speak of microzymas as being things which by evolution may become bacteria. But the way in which he understood the existence of the micro­zymas in the animal body needs to be mentioned. He admitted without difficulty the two meanings attributed by M. Pasteur to his experiment upon the blood:
First: That the blood does not change of itself.
Second: That the bodies of animals are closed to germs from without, and, consequently, that within the body there is nothing which could become bacteria.
Ch. Robin even asserted that Pasteur had proved positively and beyond question that the human economy is absolutely closed to penetration by bacteria. Nevertheless, the observations of Davaine and Rayer, of Coze and Feltz, etc., had demonstrated that in certain diseases bacteria appeared in the blood.
Unwilling to admit that the microzymas existed in it as anatomical elements, they said that one of two things must be confessed; either that bacteria are the results of a spontaneous generation into the state of the microzyma, passing into the state of bacteria, or that the microzymas reach the blood by penetration in the same manner as granules of dust, etc.1 The alternative exposed the perplexity of this savant's
1. Ch. Robin. "Lecons sur les humeurs."p. 255 (1874).
position. In fact, Ch. Robin was a protoplasmist, after a fashion; an anatomical element such as the microzyma passing, as he said, into the state of a bacterium, among the ordinary anatomical elements, which he knew so well, disarranged all his ideas. But with the loyalty of an impartial man of science, he did not hesitate to class the microzymas in the same category as the bacteria; thus in an article in the dictionary he asked whence come the microzymas into the living organism? It was doubtless the perplexity of which I have above spoken which caused him to compare the microzymas to the micrococcus of the botanist, Hallier, of Jena, or to identify them with the Bacterium punctum of Ehrenberg.1
1. ibid,. loc. cit.. p. 230 (1874).
Two years later an honest savant, of Switzerland, stated as follows:
"It is within my knowledge that it was A. Bechamp who first regarded certain molecular granulations, which he named microzymas, as being organized ferments, and formulated the three following propositions, based upon researches which he had pursued jointly with Estor:
First. In all the animal cellules which have been exam­ined there exist of necessity normal granulations, analogous to those named microzymas by Bechamp.
Second. In the physiological condition, the microzymas preserve the apparent form of a sphere.
Third. Outside of the economy, without the intervention of any foreign germ, the microzymas lose their normal form; they begin by becoming associated in chaplets, of which a separate genus has been made under the name of Torula, next they become lengthened so as to resemble bacteria isolated or associated; and he added: "It is evident that the subsequent researches of Billroth and of Tiegel are in their results only the confirmation of these three propositions."
Then, experimenting on the pancreas of ruminants and of freshly killed dogs, he declared there were always to be found the same molecular granulations, having the brownian movement, and which became vibrioniens by evolution. These molecular granulations, he exclaimed,
"Are evidently the microzymas of Bechamp, the coccos of Billroth and, without hesitation, he affirmed that they were the Monas Crepusculum of Ehrenberg."1
1. Dr. M. Nencki, Ueber die Zersetzung der gelatine and des Eiweisses bei der Faeulniss mit Pankreas, p. 35. Berne Dalp'sche Buchhandlung (1876).
Again, later, M. Nencki, in collaboration with M. Giacosa, confirmed our observations generally, working upon the same tissues as we had done, but being unwilling to class the microzymas as anatomical elements to the extent that when the bacteria and vibrios were no longer to be regarded as animals they should be regarded as plants under the name of Schizomycetes, he came at last to hold that the microzymas are the spores of these infusorial plants.
Thus the facts were verified and confirmed in every sense; they exist in all the parts, down to the cellules of every living organism, ab ovo et semine of figured ferments and are capable of becoming bacteria; but instead of regarding them in such situations as autochthones (aborigines) they were regarded as being there, either the fruit of spontaneous generation according to one of the suppositions of Ch. Robin, or as foreigners under the names of Bacterium punctum, of Monas crepusculum, of Coccus, of Micrococcus, of pointed microbe, and finally of Spores of Schizomycetes. Nevertheless, if the microzymas are not what I contend they are, autonomous anatomical elements, the alternative stated by Ch. Robin remains; spontaneous generation or penetration! But then what becomes of the dogma of closure, and that of non-putrefiability? These will be abjured rather than admit the microzymas among essential anatomical elements! In fact, M. Cornil, before the admission of M. Pasteur, declared as follows, in 1886:
"M Pasteur has abundantly demonstrated that our tissues and interior media, like the blood, contain no microorganisms, no more than the urine, except such as have been introduced from without, and the experiments of our illustrious colleague have been confirmed in all countries."1
Then M. Cornil, continuing to deny the facts I had advanced, but admitting the views of those who believed in parasitic microzymas, exclaimed:
"Messrs. Nencki and Giacosa regard the word microzyma as the synonym for micrococcus; if this synonymity be admitted, if the microzyma is merely a genus of the Schizomycetes, the word microzyma ought to disappear and the whole doctrine of M. Bechamp will vanish. "2
But after M. Pasteur's admission of the presence of microorganisms in the altered blood of his experiments, it was more than ever necessary to get rid of the annoying word microzyma; therefore went M. Cornil to Germany to call M. Nencki to the rescue. He replied (according to M. Cornil):
"The microzymas of M. Bechamp are in my opinion either the micrococcus or spores of bacteria and you are right in saying that for me the microzymas of M. Bechamp are spores of Schizomycetes."3
1. Bulletin de 1'Acad. de Med., 2nd Series, Vol. XV, p. 259 (1886). 2. Ibid.3. M. Comil did not say spores, but genus of Schizomycetes. which though very different is erroneous none the less.
And this reply of M. Nencki was communicated by M. Cornil to the Academy of Medicine.
If M. Cornil was satisfied, he was satisfied with very little, since his correspondent could not go back on his inter­pretation of ten years before. In fact, the matter in question was not one of synonymy and interpretation, but of a principle disputed and of {acts denied by himself, following M. Pasteur. This principle and these facts, did M. Nencki deny them? That is the question. The principle disputed is the following, just as 1 had enunciated it in a letter to J. B. Dumas in 1865:
"Chalk and milk contain living beings already developed, a fact which observed directly is also proved by this fact, that creosote employed in a non-coagulating dose docs not prevent the milk from clotting later; nor the chalk from transforming, without outside help, sugar and fecula, into alcohol, acetic acid, lactic acid and butyric acid."1
1. Annales de chimie et de Physique, 4th Series, Vol. VI, p. 248.
The following year (1866) I gave the name of microzymas to the living beings already developed in the chalk and milk, so as to mark the fact that they were figured ferments. It will be seen that this bringing together the chalk and the milk was intentional on my part.
It was this principle derived from experiment: that creosote which hinders the proximate principles from altering on contact with a limited quantity of air does not prevent natural organic matters from being altered in fermenting, which was disputed; and it was the presence of the microzymas, agents of these spontaneous fermentations, and their capacity to become bacteria by evolution, which was denied. But M. Nencki admitted both the principle and the facts; he had even avowed that M.M. Billroth and Tiegel had only confirmed the facts.
After that, it is of little moment, that they have said in turn that the microzymas are the Bacterium punctum, the Monas crepusculum, spores of bacteria, called Schizomycetes after having been regarded as animal-cules. I remark only that these various appellations prove merely that they do not know what to believe; but we shall see at the end of this chapter that the name microzyma has been well chosen, and that they are what they have been said to be, anatomical elements and living beings of a category not before suspected and without analogy.
Meanwhile the principle of the demonstration that the blood is a tissue whose change by fermentation, outside of the vessels, is spontaneous, as is that of every other tissue outside of the economy, is certain, both by the acknowledgment of M. Pasteur and by the declaration of M. Nencki obtained by M. Cornil. But if the principle is recognized, can it be asserted that the fact that the blood is a tissue has not been sufficiently proved? It is necessary to insist further.
I have already remarked that it is not enough that figured elements exist in a humor to entitle the humor to be regarded as a tissue. In the order of the ideas of Bichat, concerning elementary tissues, it is necessary to prove that these figured elements (i.e. having a certain form), regarded as anatomical elements, are really living; this is what I began doing; but even this is not enough, it must further be shown dial, as in tissues generally, these elements, almost in contact, are separated and yet connected among themselves by an intercellular substance in such wise that the smallest mass of the complex tissue contains them.
If the blood were a homogeneous liquid holding the microzymas in the condition in which they are isolated from the fibrin, that is to say, naked, in suspension with the globules, they would be separated and deposited notwithstanding the movement of the blood, because they are of greater density than it, in the same manner that rivers charged with argilacious mud deposit it notwithstanding the motion of the water. But the blood does not hold the microzymas naked, but surrounded by an atmosphere of special albuminoid mailer; in short, the blood contains the microzymian molecular granulations; and the albuminoid atmosphere, mucous, hyaline and swollen, gives to these granulations a density very little differing from, perhaps the sa hat of the intergranular and interglobular substance which connects them; in such wise that the molecular granulations with the globules pervade at once the entire mass of the blood.
The structure of the haematic-microzymian-molecular-granulations is precisely that which was needed to constitute the blood, with its globules a tissue. It is because of their mucous atmosphere, which swells enormously, that these innumerable microzymian-molecular-granulations occupy in the blood the entire space not occupied by the globules and the thin bed of the intergranular and interglobular liquid substance; and it is due to this special viscosity that the swollen mucous atmosphere of the microzymian molecular granulations, as well as to the mechanical obstacle which these present, that the globules remain uniformly disseminated and are not precipitated during coagulation outside of the vessels before the production of the clot; as to the special case of the blood of the solipedes, it is due to the great differ­ence between the density of the globules of their blood, and to some peculiarity of the mucous atmosphere of their microzymian granulations, connected with the lower density of the intergranular liquid.
The demonstration that the blood is a tissue, and a flowing tissue, follows from the relation of the three anatom­ical elements and the intercellular liquid substance special to each species. There is not in it any sort of mere hypothesis.
But the blood, as a tissue, belongs to a special anatomical system of organs whereof it is the content; but if it be true that the various anatomical systems are differentiated by their microzymas as they are by their form and structure, must it not be the same with the circulatory system? and in fact that is the case.
The microzymas of the vascular system, container and content, are different from those of the other anatomical systems.
I have proved this proposition in the comparative study of the decomposition of oxygenated water by the microzymas of various animal tissues, and I then extended this study to that of the microzymas of various plant tissues.
The results will be found in the following tables and have been obtained as follows: Into a graduated tube, over mercury, are introduced several cubic centimetres of non-acidulated oxygenated water of known standard. The tube is then reversed and one c.c. of microzymas in cake, enveloped in silk paper, is introduced for from 3 to 5 vol. of water, oxygenated, to 10 to 12 vol. of oxygen, and the rapidity and the volume of the oxygen set free in 24 hours are noted. As mercury by itself can set free oxygen from oxygenated water, a lube having the same volume of this water serves as a control.
A similar tube receives the dust of the laboratory introduced under the same conditions as the microzymas.

A comparison of the results of these three tables is very instructive.
From a comparison of the first two, which relate to the tissues of animals, it is seen that the microzymas of the circulatory system, including therein those of the urine, are those which decompose oxygenated water with the greatest energy, setting free the most oxygen, and at the same time, that it is the hematic microzymas and those of the lung and of the liver which are most active; and these are the organs which are most directly concerned in the circuit. This I wish especially to make clear, to demonstrate that the circulatory system was differentiated from the other anatomical sys­tems by a special property of its microzymas; a property so special that one might almost think that the other tissues owe their like power only to the hematic microzymas which they retain. But this cannot be, for the microzymas of the thoroughly drained liver are as active as those of the blood, etc.
The results of the second table are still more significant, for one cannot suppose that any hematic microzymas can be present among the vitellin nor yet among those of the saliva and urine. And if, in short, there remained the least doubt the result of the third table must remove them, by a consideration of the action of the amygdalic microzymas and that of those of beer yeast, which further proves that differences of the same kind are presented by the microzymas of the different plant tissues.
The microzymas of the vascular system, the container and its content, differ then from the microzymas of the other anatomical systems with regard to their power of decomposing oxygenated water; this is also to be seen from the observations of Thenard above mentioned when correctly interpreted. And these differences are seen to be still greater when we study comparatively the physiological functional aptitudes of the various anatomical systems in man and other animals.
For instance, while the pancreatic and gastric glands of the dog and of ruminants are endowed with like functional properties in digestion, it is otherwise with the salivary and parotid glands of man and those of the dog or horse: the salivary and parotidian microzymas of man liquify and sac­charify powerfully the starch of fecula; the like microzymas of the dog or horse liquify but slowly and do not saccharify at all the same starch. Thus the zymas secreted by the micro­zymas of the same gland in man and in other animals is essentially different. Morphologically identical these microzymas are functionally different, and I am certain that the more these are studied the more reasons will be found for differentiating the microzymas of the microzymian molec­ular granulations of the blood of the various species of ani­mals and those of their globules, as I have differentiated the haematic-microzymian-molecular-granulations.
And the microzymian theory of the living organization explains why this should be; it is because the microzymas of each species are autonomous in it and are, ab ovo, what they should be and become in order that each species should propagate itself, develop itself, preserve itself, and after death, thanks to oxygen, that each individual should undergo that total destruction which reduces all substances except the microzymas to the mineral condition. If they were not anatomically autonomous why should they differ and be functionally various in species and in their anatomical systems? I have already answered this question,1 and am answered by bald denials only. It is then worth while to adduce new considerations to convince those whom the assertions of Cornil and of Nencki might yet lead astray.
1. For demonstration as as to their autonomy, see my other works--Chamelet, publisher, 60, Passage Choiseul, Paris.

CHAPTER 8: The Blood and the Third Anatomical Element by Antoine Bechamp

THE MICROZYMAS AND THAT WHICH IS STYLED BACTERIOLOGY; THE MICROZYMAS, LIVING BEINGS BELONGING TO AN UNSUSPECTED ORDER OF THEIR OWN; OVULAR AND VITELLIN MICROZYMAS; MICROZYMAS AND MOLECULAR GRANULATIONS; GEOLOGICAL MICROZYMAS; MICROZYMAS OF THE EARTH AND OF THE WATERS; MICROZYMAS AND BACTERIA; BIOLOGICAL CHARACTERS OF THE MICROZYMAS; MICROZYMAS AND THEIR PERENNITY; THE ORGAN­IZED END OF ALL ORGANIZATION; OVULAR AND VITELLIN MICRO­ZYMAS; MICROZYMAS AND PATHOLOGY; MICROZYMAS AND CO­ORDINATION; PHAGOCYTOSIS; MICROZYMAS AND ANTHRAX; MI­CROZYMAS AND DISEASE; MICROZYMAS AND MICROBES; MICRO­ZYMAS AND THE INDIVIDUAL COEFFICIENT; MICROZYMAS, LIFE AND DEATH; MICROZYMAS AND HEALTH; MICROZYMAS AND RE­CEPTIVITY; MICROZYMAS, BLOOD AND PROTOPLASM; CONCLUSIONS.

To place beyond dispute the autonomy of the microzymas it is necessary to bring into prominence the facts and observations which prove that the existence of the microzymas as living beings has not been suspected by those naturalists who have studied the infusoria, nor yet by the anatomists who have studied the cellules and the tissues.
Demonstration that the microzymas, autonomous anatomical elements in living organisms, are living beings, morphologically determined, belonging to a category of their own, having no analogue.

Let us first get rid of the hypotheses that the microzymas are either the bacterium termo, or the Monas crepusculum, or the Micrococcus, or the spores of bacteria.

It is to be borne in mind that I gave the name of microzyma at first to the geological figured ferment of the chalk of Sens and of another calcareous earth; that I have discovered this ferment in other calcareous rocks, always of a spherical form, very brilliant, having the brownian movement and smaller than all the vibrioniens described by authors.' Ehrenberg described (in the chalk) the remains of fossil microscopic organisms called Polythalamies and Nautilites, but makes no mention either of Monas crepusculum nor of Bacterium punctum. In fact, none of the microzymas can be confounded with those described by Ehrenberg under those names. The microzymas are even smaller than the Bacterium termo, the smallest of the known infusoria, the first term of the animal kingdom, according to Felix Dujardin.

Nevertheless the microzymas had been seen in cloudy infusions of vegetable and animal matters, but they were taken for "the active molecules of Robert Brown"; that is to say, for molecules having the staggering or scintillating movement without change of place, called "brownian movement," and no further attention was paid to them.

In fact, the microzymas are neither the Bacterium punctum, nor the Monas crepusculum, nor even the Bacterium termo, which is much smaller than they. It will be sufficient to establish this fact by referring to the description of these monas, etc., given by F. Dujardin, in his "Historie Naturelle des Zoophytes," Infusoria, pp. 215 and 279.

On the other hand, if these bacteria, these monads, these micrococci, belong to determined species, it is contrary to the data of natural history to regard them as capable of being transformed into other genera and species of vibrioniens, as we see the microzymas produce them by evolution; the suggestion that the microzymas are the spores of schizomycetes is also untenable for the following reasons: A spore is a seminulum, or an egg, if according to the old view, the bacteria are animals, and search has been made for the eggs of bacteria; a grain, if according to the new creed the bacteria are vegetable; egg or grain, a spore cannot multiply itself as the microzyma does, and cannot therefore be the same thing.

Take the microzymas of the ovule in the Graafian vesicle in the fowl, and the microzymas of the vitellus of the mature egg. In the ovule there are ovular microzymas, in the vitellus, vitelline microzymas. At a given moment there are, say, a milligramme of microzymas in the ovule, and there are two or three grammes dried at 100° C. (I have isolated and weighed them) in the vitellus.1

They have then multiplied prodigiously during the development of the vitellus.2
So much then for the anatomical analysis for the egg of the fowl, and the chemical analysis shows that the elementary composition of the ovular microzymas is not the same as that of the vitellin, the former, as will be seen, being less carbonized; evidently their composition changed in the process of multiplication.3

Chemical analysis has further demonstrated that the vitellin microzymas of several species of birds differ from those of the fowl in their composition and especially in the properties of their respective zymases.4 This accords exactly with the microzymian theory, for it is evident that the microzymas are what they should be specifically, in order that, by incubation, the egg should produce the proper bird, its tissues, and all that pertains to its future being. And it has been demonstrated that during the development of the being, parallel with the anatomical development by the multiplication of the microzymas, there is a functional development of these, so that in each anatomical system they become that which they successively are in the embryo, in the foetus, in the adult, etc.

1. See the Memoir on The Albuminoid Mailers, pp. 140 and following.2. For the mode of multiplication of the microzymas see "Les Microzymas," pp. 490 and following.3. The Memoir above mentioned, p. 162.4. See J. Bechamp, "Normal and pathological albumins," pp. 77 and following.

If the hypothesis that the microzymas are the spores of bacteria were true, it would be necessary that there should first have existed in the circumambient atmosphere as many species of these spores as there are species of animal and vegetable ovules; next it would be necessary for these spores to penetrate as far as, and into the ovule, and should there multiply to fill up the vitellus of the egg of the fowl.

I need go no further, for there are still otherwise enormous difficulties, when we take into consideration the microzymas of the developed being, which are so different from the embryonal and foetal microzymas! But it now lies with the opponents of the microzymian theory to demonstrate the existence of these spores and of their penetration as far as, and into, the ovules and their multiplication.

We have thus discarded the hypothesis opposed to that of autonomy. It is also discarded by the following consideration, which deserves being underscored.

Shortly before M. Pasteur's admission in 1886 of the presence of the microzymas in the altered blood of his experiment, he had, for the purpose of denying them, asserted that the microzymas were the molecular granulations "which we all know." This was to his confreres of the Academy.
Yes, histologists and anatomo-pathologists knew them and represented them by a "stippling" in their figures of special tissues.

But their name even betrayed the opinion that they were neither organized nor living; in effect, the qualification of molecular was intended to indicate that it meant only small collections of some sort of matter; thus they were described as white, gray, minerals, fats, albuminoids, etc. They were even described as possessing the brownian movement; nevertheless, before the discovery of the microzymas, no one thought of connecting them either with the bacterium punctum or the monas crepusculum.

They were connected with anatomical organisms as being the remains of tissues, of destroyed cellules, or as amorphous matter; no one dreamed of making them come from outside. No consideration of the anatomical-molecular-granulations had anything to do with the discovery of the microzymas, but, as I have shown above, purely chemical considerations.
No, the molecular granulations are not the microzymas.

And from the time of our first note, Estor and I have stated that the microzymas exist only among the anatomical objects which in histology are called molecular granulations. But we held the microzymas to be autonomous anatomical elements; a more careful anatomical analysis enabled me to demonstrate that there exist naked microzymas and microzymas in the condition which I have termed microzymian molecular granulations.

Thus is disproved another gratuitous and erroneous assertion!
I return to the microzymas. I had described them from the commencement as being chemically and physiologically figured ferments, producers of zymases, which are called soluble ferments, and were placed in the same category as me figured ferments which are insoluble. Biologically, I distinguished them as being such as by evolution could become vibrionien, a fact which we have seen to be verified in every sense.

But in the experiments on spontaneous alterations, or fermentations, wherein microzymas become bacteria, we have seen that these were destroyed and that vibrioniens more and more minute appeared in their place, so that at last there remained only of these bacteria the forms nearest to the microzymas; in the same manner consequently, that by their destruction the cellules set their microzymas free, the bacteria in their complete destruction reproduce microzymas similar to those of the chalk, and we will now see how that is.

In the experiments on the spontaneous alterations of natural animal matters, the substances, which in a chemical sense are termed organic, which result from transformations by fermentation under the influence of the microzymas, before and after their vibrionian evolution, with or without the setting free of gas, are never entirely destroyed; that is to say, they are not reduced to a mineral condition, carbonic acid, water, nitrogen, etc.; for such destruction oxygen is necessary under conditions which reproduce those realized in geological epochs.

When I had discovered the microzymas in the chalk and in other calcareous rock, and became convinced that they were not dependent on atmospheric germs, I asked myself if they were not the living remains of organized being which had disappeared in geologic times.1 This hypothesis was verified in the following manner:

A kitten was killed and buried between two beds of pure carbonate of lime, and left in a cylindrical glass vessel, covered with a small quantity of paper in such wise that the air had free access to it, but its dust was excluded. The experiment lasted seven years. Every part of the body, except some fragments of bone, had disappeared. The carbonate of lime was perfectly white, so complete had been the work of destruction. Under the microscope, nothing was to be seen in the upper layers of the carbonate except microscopic crystals of aragonite of this carbonate; but in the beds adjacent to the place, and underneath, where the kitten had been, and beneath, there were crowds of glittering motile microzymas, such as are to be seen in the chalk of Sens, etc.

And with this kind of artificial calcareous rock, containing the microzymas of an animal of the present day, I was able to repeat the experiments on fermentation which I had made with the chalk of Sens and with other calcareous rocks, both lacustrine and marine.2 Such was the first experimental verification of the hypothesis that the microzymas of the chalk and of calcareous rocks are the organized remains, still living, of the beings which lived in the geological ages of the earths to which those rocks belonged. Read the note of the Comptes Rendus which I have just cited and you will be convinced that this verification has also been its vindication.
1. C. R.. Vol. LXX p. 914 (1870).2. Conference at the Congress of the French Association for the Advancement of Science. Nantes (1875).
I have said that the microzymas of the artificial chalk were the microzymas of an animal of the present epoch, but this needs some modification in terms to be quite accurate. They were the microzymas of the bacteria which the normal microzymas of the animal had first become by evolution. By fresh experiments I have learned that the microzymas of an entire body, or of the liver, of the heart, of the lungs, of the kidneys, under the conditions of my experiment become bacteria in the first phases of the phenomenon, these then disappear, becoming again microzymas, while the rest of the mailer already transformed is, under (heir influence, and with access of air, reduced to the mineral state, carbonic acid, water, nitrogen, etc.1 And I have demonstrated that whereas in the climate of Montpellier seven years were required to accomplish this, a much longer time would be needed in a colder climate, so that in a climate such as that of the Obi valley centuries were required.
It was then a legitimate conclusion that the microzymas of the calcareous rocks, of the clays, of the marls; in short, of all the rocks which contain them, are the organized and living remains of beings which had been living, of animals and plants of the geologic epochs; that these beings were histologically constituted as are the beings of our epoch, that their microzymas, during their destruction, had become bacteia by evolution, and that the microzymas, geological ferments, of these rocks, are those of these bacteria destroyed in their turn and reduced to their microzymas.
1. See "Les Microzymas," etc., pp. 624 and following. See also note: C. R., Vol. LXX, p. 914, "Les Microzymas," etc., p. 952.
It is not surprising then that, having long pursued the anticipated consequences of the hypothesis now verified, I have demonstrated the presence of the microzymas in the earths of the garrigues of the departments of Herault and of Card, in cultivated lands generally, in moor lands, in the alluvials, in the waters, in the dust of the streets, where they are to be found in crowds; often still in the condition of bacteria, proving that, like those of the calcareous rocks, they are energetic ferments. And already, prior to 1867, I had made known their role in the soil in agriculture.
These researches led to a result of very great importance; it was the demonstration that what was and still is called germs of the air are essentially nothing other than the microzymas of beings which have lived, but have disappeared or are being destroyed before our eyes. In fact, by precise experiments, I have proved that the microzymas of the air are ferments of the same order as those of the chalk, of the rocks, and of those of my experiments with artificial chalk; only, varying with the places, the circumambient a r may, along with these microzymas, contain conides of lichens, spores of mushrooms, bacteria and everything that the wind can disperse in it.1
1. See, for details. C. R, Vol. LXXIV. p. 629; Vol. LXIII, p. 451; and "Les microzymas." etc., pp. 122, 135. 940. 952.
There is then no panspermy such as that which Charles Bonnet had invented, nor that which Spallanzani and M. Pasteur (after me) had admitted. In short, there are no pre-existing germs. At each period, as in our days, and in each place there exist in the surrounding air only the microzymas of former beings which had disappeared and are disappearing with the things which the wind scatters in it.
But if we reflect that the species of microzymas are: first, as numerous as the species of eggs, of seeds, of spores of the various species of animals and plants; next, that there are in each animal and vegetable organism, already developed or in process of development, microzymas as specifically numerous as there are anatomical systems and organs, tissues and special cellules in these organisms, it is easy to conceive that the species of atmospheric microzymas are present in enormous numbers. One can also understand the very great number of changes which these microzymas may cause, when some one of these species fall into a fermentescible medium in which it can multiply, and either evolve in it/or build in it a cellule, or a mould.
If then, as I have demonstrated experimentally, there are besides microzymas, and as well in animals as in plants, among the micro-organisms of the circumambient air, spores, conides of fungi, of lichens, even actual cellules of ferments,1 it is easy to understand that if these micro-organisms fall into fermentescible media they will develop in it, each according to its nature, and that various productions, moulds, divers cellules, and at the same time vibrioniens, may appear in it.2
But in all the observations and in all the experiments relative to the spontaneous change of natural vegetable and animal matters, and in the fermentations of sugar or of fecula by aid of the tissues and humors of animals, when the influence of the micro-organisms of the air has been des­troyed or suppressed,3 only microzymas and vibrioniens, and vibrios or bacteria, fruits of their evolution, are seen; this proves that the microzymas are autonomous anatomical elements existing in it of themselves.
1. "Sur L'origine des ferments du vin," by A. Bechamp, C. R., Vol. LIX, p. 626 (1864).2. See C. R., Vol. LXXIV. p. 115, and "Les Microzymas," etc.. p. 948.3. Here a complementary explanation is necessary to explain more clearly the mode of action of creosote in the experiments in which it has been employed to annihilate the influence of germs of the air. And first of all, in speaking of germs, it no longer relates to this vague something, which when called upon by Ch. Robin to define, M. Pasteur called "origin of life," but figured ferments, upon which creosote exercises an influence clearly determined. I must therefore recall that I have several times insisted on the fuel that creosote is efficient in annihilating the influence of the germs of a limited volume of the surrounding air, unless the air be renewed. And it is so, because a limited volume of air contains only limited number of micro-organismic ferments. But creosote, while it does not prevent the ferments from acting, hinders their multiplication. In reality the ferments of a limited volume of air, which are capable of acting upon a fermentescible medium, do act upon it, but only in proportion to their quantity, in such wise that the result is so inappreciable that it is as though it were nothing; it is thus that the quantity of sugar, inverted, in the presence of creosote, by the microzymas of a small limited volume of air can be determined neither by reagents, nor by the polariscope. But if a slow current of several hundred litres of the same air is caused to act upon a creosoted solution of sugar the microzymas and other micro-organisms retained by the liquor render this at last cloudy, and. thus accumulated, there are among them some which effect the inversion, without developing moulds, while the microzymas undergo a greater or less vibrionian evolution. Such is the exact idea to be formed of the influence of the creosote, and of the role of the atmospheric ferments. When, owing to their presence, productions such as moulds are produced, it is because die special conditions of existence of these moulds, etc., have been realized. But microzymas in their function of anatomical elements only become vibrioniens from the substance of tissues and humors, ever, in spite of the presence of creosote, provided the volume of air be limited or completely absent.
These statements and considerations may be summed up in the following propositions:
(1). The microzymas of the animal organism proceed from the vitellin microzymas, which are autonomous anatomical elements in the vitellus.
(2). The number of anatomical species of microzymas is enormous.
(3). The essential biological characters of the microzymas are to be creators of cellules by synthesis and of vibrioniens by evolution.
(4). The physiological and chemical characters of microzymas are to produce the zymases and to be themselves ferments having a determined form.
These propositions are also true for plants beginning with the ovule; but from the fact that a microzyma may become a vibrionien by evolution, it necessarily follows that the species of microzymas being innumerable the species of vibrioniens are likewise innumerable.
It is further important to remember that an anatomical element microzyma is animal in an animal, vegetable in a vegetable. Hence arises this question: To what kingdom belongs the bacterium of such or such an animal microzyma? Of such or such a vegetable microzyma? We must remember that any microzyma, before it accomplishes the evolution which produces a bacterium, passes through the evolutionary phases of microzyma slightly changed in form, of microzyma successively associated in twos, in threes, in several grains, etc. But those forms have been described under the names of Monas, of Bacterium termo and punctum, of Coccus, of Diplococcus, of Torulo, of Streptococcus, of Micrococcus, of Mesococcus, of Microbe with a point, of Microbe with a double point, etc. Nor is that all; bacteria in spontaneously destroying themselves to become microzymas similar to those of the rock-chalk or of the artificial chalk of my experiments, have passed through new forms, of which the most constant is that which has also been described as the Bacterium termo.1
1. See, on this subject, Felix Dujardin, "Les Zoophites Infusoire," p. 232.
But what are such specifications worth, based only upon the shape, on the length and thickness, upon the color, the motility or immotility of the object specified? In the order of received ideas it would be too tedious to discuss them; it suffices for me to say that Felix Dujardin, who knew the germ theory and did not allude to it in his explanations, was of opinion that the phenomena observed in these changes were favorable to the doctrine of spontaneous generation; and consequently that outside of the microzymian theory it is all incomprehensible and arbitrary. A priori one cannot tell to what kingdom a bacterium belongs, for one can only distinguish a microzyma, and consequently a bacterium, by the origin and function of the microzyma. An example will make this clear: Take the parotid gland of a man, and that of a horse, the structure and functions of which seem to be the same and of which the microzymas of the cellules are morphologically identical; well, while the parotidian microzymas of man liquify and energetically saccharify the starch of fecula, those of the horse liquify that starch but do not sac­charify it And we have established by other differences of the like kind that the microzymas of the different anatomical systems of a same organism may differ one from the other; and by still greater reason those of different organisms may differ.
Plants, like animals, being anatomically constituted living by their respective microzymas, the bacteria which these microzymas can become are evidently limited to the two kingdoms; and so perhaps the question whether a vibrionien is animal, as was thought, or plant, as is now asserted, is an idle one.
But if one chooses in spite of all this to insist that the bacteria are plants and that the microzymas are their spores, a new question would arise, of which of the species of schizomycetes which the same microzyma may become before becoming a perfect bacterium (Bacterium termo, Monas crepusculum, torula, Diplococcus, Streptococcus, Micrococcus, etc.)—is it first the spore, in the organism before evolution, and then in the chalk-rock, or in the artificial chalk, after the total destruction of the organism?
According to accepted notions the reply cannot be otherwise than uncertain! According to the microzymian theory here is the answer.
An anatomical element, microzyma, in a plant or in an animal, whose conditions of existence have just changed, can become a bacterium by evolution, and the intermediate evolutionary phases, like those of the tadpole, which becomes a frog, leaves the special nature of the microzyma still existing; there are not new species. The perfect bacterium depends on the nature of the microzyma, as the perfect batrachian depends on the particular nature of its tadpole.
Every bacterium resolves itself by spontaneous destruction into a microzyma, and the microzymas thus evolved are different from the anatomical microzyma which has become a bacterium, not morphologically, nor functionally so far as regards being a figured ferment, but by a collection of properties, which assure the perennity of the form and of the function in a condition of individual separateness.
But the chief difference consists in this: The anatomical element microzyma in the vitellus is the organized commencement of all animal organization, and in the ovule of the plant it is the commencement of all plant organization. On the other hand, the microzyma resulting from the destruction of a bacterium is the organized end of all organization.
AND HERE IS SOMETHING STUPENDOUS! The geological microzymas, as well as those of the artificial chalk in my experiment, are organized and living, not only because, without change of form, they are individually figured ferments, but also because under certain conditions, such as those of the fibrin in the experiment described in the first chapter, at the same time that they act as ferments they can again become bacteria by evolution. The microzymas not only possess the sort of perennity of which I spoke; they enjoy also the stupendous duration of the geological epochs from the time the microzymian rocks have been formed down to the present time. And this duration means for us, that the microzymas have been constituted physiologically imperishable. And this last statement must convince us that the microzymas are organized living beings, of a class apart, without analogue.
And it is thus, precisely because the microzymas are, essentially and by destination, autonomous anatomical elements in each anatomical system, becoming what they ought to become in each, by substantial and functional development, parallel with the development of such system in the development of the entire organism, that they are organized living beings of a class apart as above stated.
The following is the experimental proof that this new principle of anatomy and physiology is well founded.
The vitellin microzymas of the egg of the fowl do not pre-exist in the ovule; they are the result of a substantial development, and of the proliferation of the ovular microzymas.
To prove this, it will be sufficient to make the elementary analysis of the microzymas of the vitellus of the fowl's egg, and of those of the ovules remaining in the Graafian vesicle, while these ovules are only a few millimetres in diameter. The following are these analyses:
Vitellin Microzymas Ovular MicrozymasCarbon 52.67% 50.63%Hydrogen 7.17% 7.36%Nitrogen 15.71% 15.67%Oxygen, etc.1
1. See"Memoire sur les matieres albuminoid." p. 161, and the correction in the note on p. 489.
The difference of two per cent, of carbon in the percentage composition answers to great differences in the nature of the proximate principles of these microzymas. I will add that the vitellin microzymas contain much more mineral matter than the ovular. It is thus evident that the microzymas of the ovule become vitellin microzymas by substantial development, while they multiply and the vitellus grows. In short, one may say that the ovular microzymas become vitellin microzymas by maturing.
It would take too long to dwell as long as might be desirable on this result and upon the whole of the chemical, physiological and anatomical phenomena which this ripening necessitates in order that the vitellin microzymas should become fitted to play their part, chemical, physiological and histogenic, during the embryonic development, etc. I must refer the student to what I have said elsewhere.1 What is most important to bear in mind is, that no matter how high one goes [in the scale of living beings] the microzymas are found in the ovule, and that these microzymas are not those which are to be found in the vitellus, but will become them.
1. See Les Microzymas," etc, pp. 487 and following.
All the special facts which I have made known, including the last, authorize me in erecting into a general principle the precise experimental idea; that the microzyma, the final term of the anatomical analysis, is in truth the simple anatomical element which satisfies the conception of Bichat and completely destroys that of living matter not morphologically defined.
The cellularists, it is but fair to recall, regarding the cellule as the simplest anatomical element, believed it proceeded necessarily from a former cellule, omnis cellula e cellula, holding it to be the vital unit, living per se, and regarded an entire organism as the sum of these units. But we now know that that was a deduction from incomplete and superficial observations, for the cellule, a transitory anatomical element, has the microzyma for its anatomical element. It is this which alone possesses all the characters of an anatomical element, living per se, and which must be regarded as the unit of life. It is what I have already stated in the following terms:
"The microzyma is at the beginning and at the end of every living organization. It is the fundamental anatomical element whereby the cellules, the tissues, the organs, the whole, of an organism are constituted living."
Let us devote a few words to develop this idea. Let us penetrate a little further into this notion of a fundamental anatomical element, which, as has been said, implies that the microzyma is the living atom of the organization as the physical atom is the element of the molecule of a simple body. This would be true if the microzyma were unchangeable in its simplicity. But in reality it is essentially mutable, as are all living bodies; and it is especially so, in order that it may fulfil its numerous functions. In fact, the microzymas, functionally different in the different anatomical systems of the same species, and different at all ages, beginning with the embryonal stage, have been primitively those of the vitellus, after having been those of the ovule. A microzyma then is not, properly speaking, an atom; but always anatomically simple, it becomes, by nutrition, that which it needs to become, so as to accommodate itself to each new condition of existence which the successive phases of the development of each anatomical system provide for it. It is thus that even in the embryo, in that which will be the ovary, a category of microzymas becomes again ovular microzymas to recommence the same cycle. I add that, taken as a whole and in its details, the THEORY HAS BEEN CONFIRMED, VERIFIED, CORROBORATED by a great number of other facts of general anatomy and of pathological anatomy and of physiology.1
1. See particularly the notes and publications following:A. Bechamp: Facts useful for the history of the origin of the bacteria. Natural development of these little plants in the frozen parts of certain plants. C. R.. Vol. LXVTII. p. 466(1869).A Estor: Note for use in the history of the microzymas contained in animal cellules. C. R.. Vol. LXVIII. p. 519. It relates to the microzymas in bacterian evolution in a cyst which had just been removed.Bechamp and Estor: On the microzymas of pulmonary tubercle in the cretacious state. C. R., Vol. LXVII, p. 960 (1868). It relates to the discovery of microzymas in a condition of evolution within the tubercle, regarded as the remains of the destroyed epithelium of the pulmonary alveoli.Bechamp and Estor: Facts useful for the history of the microzymas and bacteria. Physiological transformation of bacteria into microzymas and of microzymas into bacteria in the digestive tube of the same animal. C. R., Vol. LXXVI, p. 1143 (1873).Bechamp: Facts useful for the history of the histological construction of the glairine of Molitg. C.R., Vol. LXXVI. p. 1485 (1873).Bechamp: The diseases of the silk worm. C. R.. various notes from 1866 to 1374. They relate to the pebrine, a parasitic disease, and to the flacherie, a microzymian disease, not parasitic.J. Grasset: On the histological phenomena of inflammation. Treatise regarding a new theory, based upon the consideration of the molecular granulations (microzymas). Gazette Med. de Paris, year 1873.E. Baltus: Theory of the Microzyma, a theoretic and practical study of pyogenesis (the formation of pus). Theses of the Faculty of Montpellier, year. 1874, No. 41.J. Bechamp: The microzymas and their functions at the different ages of the same being. Theses of the Faculty of Montpellier, 1875, No. 63.A Bechamp: Microzymas and disease; in "Les Microzymas," etc., p. 744. (Chamalet, 60, Passage Choiseul.)A Bechamp: Puerperal septicaemia, pleurisy, the albuminuria and the preface to Microzymas et Microbes. (Chainalct, 60, Passage Choiseul, Paris.)A. Tripier: Electricity and Cholera. Genesis, prophylaxy and treatment. (Georges Carre, pub. 1884). In this memoir there will be found a comparison of the microbian system and the microzymian theory, highly original and at the same time the conception of what the eminent author terms the individual coefficient.
When by the attentive study of these facts one has become convinced that the microzymian theory is their pure and simple expression, it will be at once recognized that the cellule is already an organ in which, by nutrition, the conditions of the preservation of the microzymas with the constancy and regularity of their chemical and physiological functions are unceasingly realized. And it will thus be understood that the microzymian molecular granulations, whether of certain cellules, of the vitellus, or of the blood, also realize after their manner the conditions of this constancy and regularity. When these conditions are no longer realized they may undergo vibrionian evolution.

The most prominent fact in the history of the microzymas, that which has been the most disputed, precisely because of their capacity to undergo vibrionian evolution, is the fact of their anatomical autonomy. Now this faculty, which is only manifested when the normal conditions of existence of the microzymas, functioning as anatomical elements, are no longer fulfilled, is the best proof which could be given of the change which has happened in their condition, causing their irregular and changed functioning.

In fact, in their various anatomical situations, the microzymas remain morphologically similar to themselves. They function in each cellule, in each organ, in each anatomical system, naturally, chemically and physiologically for themselves while preserving their individuality; at the same time that by coordination, according to the happy and thoroughly scientific expression of Dr. Antoine Cros, they function for the benefit of the microzymian molecular granulations of the cellules, of the organs and of the various anatomical systems taken altogether, whose physiological condition of health is preserved by them.

But if from some etiological cause certain changes happen in an organ, changes such as auscultation or percussion can precisely ascertain, as, for instance, an increase in the volume of the spleen, M. Cross tells us that there is a decoordination, a functional perturbation in the entire organism and disease. It is worth mentioning that from the time Dr. Cros became acquainted with the microzymian theory, he did not hesitate to recognize the microzymas as the anatomical agents of the decoordination; how does it happen?

Among the causes which produce disease, a sudden chill in summer is the one most frequently indicated or invoked. The chill is at the same time an influence and a lowering of temperature. I do not insist on the fact that it is only something living which is painfully affected, so as to confine myself to the physical phenomenon.

But the microzymas are very sensitive to variations of temperature; so much so that even the geological microzymas act regularly only at temperatures near 40° to 42 °C. (= 104° to 107° F.); in fact, the microzymas of the chalk of Sens do not act so as to cause fecula to ferment in a temperature below 38° C. (= 100°.4 F.). Further a very slight lowering of the temperature is sufficient for the egg which should produce a bird not to produce one, and to putrefy or to produce the monsters of Dareste when the heat is not uniformly applied. In fact, the influences of the medium (as if it should become neutral or acid), which modify the activity of the microzymas acting alone, are various.

That which happens to the isolated microzymas happens also to those of the egg and for those of the organism. Suppress the air and the egg does not become a fowl, but undergoes another kind of change.

If from any cause whatever the air does not have access or has an insufficient access to the pulmonary alveolae, and their epithelium becomes the pulmonary tubercle, the cellules become reduced to their microzymas, which are then found in vibrionian evolution in the tubercle in the cretatious state. If the decoordination resulting from an irregular functioning of a part of an anatomical system is sufficient to bring on a malaise which is not removed, there will arise a diseased condition because of a sharp change of the conditions of existence of the microzymian anatomical elements, and the change in the medium sufficient to cause the decoordination will manifest itself by the vibrionian and bacterian evolution of the microzymas of such or such part of the system.

It is thus that in the disease called "Sand de rate" (Anthrax), so thoroughly studied by Davaine, the diseased microzymas end by evolving into what that learned physician called bacteridiae, the blood globules undergoing the changes which are so characteristic. The bacteridiae were not the cause of the diseased condition, but were one of its effects; proceeding from the morbid microzymas they were capable of inducing this diseased condition in the animal whose microzymas were in a condition to receive it. Hence it is seen that the alteration of natural animal matters is spontaneous, and justifies the old aphorism so concisely expressed by Pidoux: "Diseases are born of us and in us."

On the other hand, the disregard of this law of nature, the firm establishment whereof is completed by the present work, necessarily led M. Pasteur to deny the truth of the aphorism, and to imagine a pathogenic panspermy, as he had before conceived, a priori, that there was a panspermy of fermentations. That M. Pasteur after having been a sponteparist should reach such a conclusion was natural enough; he was neither physiologist nor physician, but only a chemist without any knowledge of comparative science.

What is astonishing is, that he should have succeeded in procuring the triumph of a preconceived system among physicians and in academies, and to procure the rejection of the microzymian theory [without examination. Trans.]. For instance, an enlightened physician thus summed up the fundamental proposition of M. Pasteur: "The microbes always come from without; they constitute species which remount from generation to generation up to the origin of the world."1

An eminent surgeon, M. Verneuil, ended by admitting as a demonstrated theorem that there is no spontaneous tetanus, that there is no spontaneous small pox, syphilis, glanders, hydrophobia, tuberculosis, charbon or malignant pustule; declaring that the pathogenic problem consisted solely in discovering how and when the microbe, also called virus, come from without, penetrates into the organism; declaring that the question is thus stated between old medicine and the microbina medicine "with extreme simplicity and without the least ambiguity.2a
1. Gazette medical, Paris, 6th Series. Vol. V, p. 218. This is precisely what M. Chamberland said of micro-organisms in general: "Recherches sur I'origine el le developpement des organismes microscopiques." Theses de la Faculte des Sciences. Parais, 1879. See also "Microzymas et Microbes," p. 25, 2d Ed.
2. C. R_,Vol. CV, p. 552.

[a. There is an implication to be found in the statement of Surgeon Verneuil, though probably not meant by him, to which assent must be given when understood. It is TRUE that there is no such THING as tetanus, small pox. syphilis, etc., as is implied by the general use of nosological terms. Disease is not a thing, an entity: it is a condition, and the error of regarding the condition of disease as an entity has confirmed, where it has not originated, much of the prevailing erroneous treatment of the sick. Nosological terms have a use; it is that of bringing to the mind of the physician a group of pathological symptoms, which may or may not be present in the case of the patient under consideration; from them, when present, the diseased condition of the patient can be recognized and treated.

Unfortunately, through not understanding this truth, attempts are frequently made to treat, not the patient, but the name, which has been given to a collection of morbid symptoms. A broken limb is a thing; the inflammation which results from it is a condition, and if gangrene ensues the gangrene is not a thing, but a condition to be taken into consideration with all the other symptoms in the treatment of the patient. The surgeon, Verneuil, had probably a glimmering perception of this truth, but he misapplied it, for his theory and practice, as a physician, and the theory and practice of nearly all modern medicine assume that the condition to be treated is a thing having a name and this name is treated instead of the patient.—Trans.]

But these assertions (of Surgeon Verneuil) are reduced to nothing, when we call to mind that the pretended germs of the air are only the microzymas of organisms which have disappeared, which had become bacteria by evolution; that even at the Academy of Medicine I said—and no one ven­tured to contradict me—that no one had ever been able to reproduce a disease on the nosological roll by taking the pretended pathogenic microbe in normal air, but only in the diseased animal. And I add, that just as with time the fibrin-ous microzymas lose the property of decomposing oxygenated water so, as proved long ago by Davaine, after a short time the blood of an animal which had died of anthrax [sang de rate] no longer communicated that diseased condition; and the same is true in all cases.

THUS NORMAL AIR NOT ONLY DOES NOT, BUT CANNOT, CONTAIN THE PRETENDED PATHOGENIC MICROBES, AND THE VERY PRINCIPLE OF MICROBIAN MEDICINE CONSTITUTES A FUNDAMENTAL ERROR.

But no attention was paid to this. Abandoning the famous dogma of the closure of the body to germs from without, it was admitted "that the human organism carries constantly a large number of microbes of many different species" which only await the moment when "the organism being disturbed in its physiological functioning will be given over to the activity of its own microbes; whose presence it had theretofore borne without being affected." M. Jaccond wrote the above [nonsense] with reference to two cases of acute pneumonia following a chill.1

1. "Journal des societes scientifiques," 4 May, 1887, p. 156.

In M. Pasteur's set, M. Jaccond's opinion was accepted; and although their master had declared that the cellules were not living, his disciples imagined that the leukocytes (under the name of phagocytes) were living like amoeba and able to perform movements called amaeboid. And it was imagined that these phagocytes formed themselves into troops to pursue and devour the microbes. There was thus a phagocytosis,a- which was trumpeted forth as providential. The precise knowledge of the blood reduces to its just value this latest form of the struggle against the microzymian theory. Of all the suppositions and fancies of M. Pasteur, there remains only, even for his disciples, that which consists in admitting a sole cause, the germs or microbes of the air, to explain the phenomena of fermentations and disease.

Nevertheless all physicians did not think as did Verneuil or as did M. Jaccond. Before 1866, while the triumph of the microbian medicine was in full swing, Dr. A. Tripier did not admit that there was a microbe come from without to be considered. His attention had been drawn to the new opinions by considering how frequently in the classical books of medicine a sudden chill led to everything. Here is the masterly way in which he explained it:

[These words must be erased from the language of science. Trans.]

"It is not at the time when the consideration of the individual coefficient tends to take a larger and larger place in nosological speculations that we must return to a simple etiology which has been rightly questioned. I am far from pretending that the savants to whom we are indebted for such interesting researches in the direction of specific causes design to bring everything within it, but those who do not exhibit that much prudence must be reminded that to constitute a morbid state the concurrence of many conditions are indispensable, that however specific it may be, a single cause is no cause at all."

It was thus that M. Tripier placed in parallel lines etiology according to the ancient medicine and the microbian medicine. I will state later the profound meaning of the expression, drawn from algebra,a or "individual coefficient". Let us say, at first, that it has been supposed that maladies resulting from specific causes are poisonings by living matters capable of reproducing themselves in the organism. The mechanism of these poisonings, says M. Tripier, "has been explained in many ways without being permitted to reject one on account of another."

"According to M. Pasteur," said he, "the multiplication of microbes would be the consequence of the introduction of germs introduced from without. For M. Bechamp the microbe a1 might proceed from a special mode of evolution of living molecular granulations which he named microzymas, granulations which exist in all protoplasm, the vicious evolution whereof might be regarded as causes independent of the introduction of leaven of foreign origin."

The radical difference between the principle of the microbian medicine and that of the microzymian theory of disease is thus clearly expressed. The microzymas are not then the cause of disease, but by their defective or morbid functional evolution under the various influences whereof I have spoken, their evolution may become vibrionian. It was only through the ambiguity that M. Pasteur succeeded in creating, that M. Tripier was able to say that I had admitted that the microbe proceeded from the microzyma, and that later M. Jaccond thought that the microzymas are the special microbes of the human organism.1

[a. The term "individual coefficient" was first introduced to indicate the amount and direction of errors which each individual astronomer was prone to commit.—Trans.]

[a. The term microbe, introduced for the sole purpose of drowning the grand discoveries of Bechamp, is, as presently shown, an etymological solecism.—Trans.]

1. This is how the ambiguity was created. The surgeon, Sedillot, thoughtlessly invented the word microbe as a name for the vibrioniens, which eventually Davaine regarded as the living agents of disease. M, Pasteur, heedless of the inacurracy, even from an etymological point of view of this word applied to a microscopic being of immense longevity, adopted it to designate the micro-organized ferments; thus beer yeast was a microbe, as also the bacteridia of Davaine.

He went further, and in a book published under his auspices he permitted the following definition to appear: "Under the name of microscopic beings or microbes are meant all living beings too small to be seen by the naked eye, all those which can only be seen with the aid of instruments which can enlarge them a great number of times, such as the small worm called trichina, which produces trichinosis, and an acarus, which produces the itch..." The work from which the above is quoted appeared in 1833 with a preface by M. Pasteur. Here we perceive how all diseases are regarded as parasitic on the same ground as the itch, and how the microzymas have become to be miscalled microbes!

To appreciate the antinomy between the microbian system and the microzymian theory, and to give to this work its practical utility by showing that the theory explains what the system is powerless to make clear, it will be sufficient to recall the two fundamental facts upon which rest the fabric of the demonstration that the blood is a flowing tissue, and, like all tissues, is spontaneously alterable.

The first is that a mixture of proximate principles, under the specified conditions, is naturally unalterable; but on contact with a limited or unlimited quantity of common air the same mixture always changes, owing to the various ferments which develop in it from the germs carried in this air. This mixture then does not alter spontaneously.
The second, that a natural animal matter, tissue, or humor, withdrawn from a living animal in perfect health, and under the same conditions, inevitably alters, even when absolutely protected from the air and its germs. Natural animal matter then is spontaneously alterable.

It is also desirable to recall: First, that the differences in the nature of the two orders of substances is such, that in the alteration of the former the micro-organisms consist of several categories of different species; while in the alteration of the latter only one category is to be found, viz., the microzymas, and afterwards, most frequently, the vibrioniens, products of their evolution; second, that, corroborating the facts, creosote in adequate quantity hinders the alteration of the former in contact with a limited volume of air, preventing the appearance of ferments; while the same quantity does not hinder the alteration of the latter, nor, in suitable cases, the vibrionian evolution of the microzymas.

Of these two facts M. Pasteur has only regarded the first and has denied the second, and it is because he and savants who have trusted to his word have looked upon the animal body only as organs constituted of a mixture of immediate principles—protoplasm—where nothing exists capable of becoming a vibrionien, that they have thought that the microbe coming from without is the sole cause of the alteration of this mixture and of disease. Now if the organism were what they think, and the sole cause of disease were what they say, a mixture of immediate principles necessarily altering an exposure to the air, every one would, of equal necessity, become diseased; but even in times of epidemics the majority are not attacked! An explanation of this fact has been sought in the microbe itself and in other considerations of the like order; but they are all worthless, for if the air contains that which changes the mixture, it does not contain that which causes disease.

The old medicine explained the immunity of the living by the receptivity, the predisposition, which those who are not attacked do not possess. M. Tripier, more precise, invokes the individual coefficient. But a mixture of proximate principles which, when exposed to the air, is always ready to be altered enjoys no immunity!

In exact language one can only speak of receptivity of the individual coefficient, of that which is regarded as a living body. But what is a living body? What is life?

Life, say some, is a special force, manifesting itself in ponderable matter. J. R. Mayer denies this. However it may be, they, the former, speak of a physical theory of life. We have seen that, according to Pasteur, life is that which elaborates the proximate principles, the natural substances of which the organism is composed.

Bichat said: "Life is the totality of the functions which resist death." But what is life? What is death? And what is the individual coefficient in the microzymian theory? For there is no longer any question of protoplasm!

Bichat said that life was a property of tissue because he regarded elementary tissues as the living elements of organized beings, which, in his view, possessed in themselves a permanent principle of reaction which enabled them to resist the causes of destruction which surround them.

The microzymian theory verifies the conception of Bichat even on this point; in fact:
The microzyma is the fundamental anatomical element, autonomically living, proliferating, while remaining morphologically similar to itself. It is in reality an apparatus whose functions manifest themselves, in a medium which realizes the conditions of its existence, by chemical reactions which cause it to produce the special zymases depending upon its special nature and the various proximate principles varying according to the place and the medium where it functions in the organism. Isolated from the organism and consequently in new conditions, as in the case of fibrin, there are some which act like lactic ferment with regard to fecula, etc.

In short, the microzymas resist so well the ordinary causes of destruction that, in the calcareous and other rocks, geological microzymas are to be found, now living, which functioned as anatomical elements of the animals of the epoch of those rocks. Here then we have the organized being, living per se, physiologically imperishable, unsuspected until I described it.a It is in it alone, functioning as an anatomical element, wherein resides the permanent principle of reaction which enables the organisms, whereof it composes the cellules, the tissues, the organs, to preserve themselves by nutrition and resist the athmotelluric (Tripier) conditions which
[a. Literally "of which I spoke," but the real meaning is as given above in my translation.—Trans.]

unceasingly tend to destroy them. And as there is no anatomical element simpler than the microzyma, and none other like it, resistant to total destruction, if we call life the totality of the anatomical properties which render the microzymas constructors of cellules by synthesis, and capable of becoming bacteria or vibrios by evolution; and the aggregate of the physiological and chemical energies which enable them to produce the zymases and to nourish themselves by transforming for their own use the materials of the medium in the anatomical systems wherein they function, eliminating at the same time that which they disassimilate after having used it, it must surely be admitted that LIFE is, in them allied, it is true, to matter, but to the matter in the structured organization, morphologically defined, and not simply to ponderable matter. So much for the general statement.

We now know that the microzymas are functionally different in the various anatomical systems of the same animal, and that they may be functionally different also in the same organs of the same structure in man and animals. It thence results that it is not always permissible in experimenting to draw conclusions from one animal to another and least of all to man. So that if we could admit with Bichat that life is a property of tissue, this property is not the same in all the tissues of the same structure and in their microzymas.

I will endeavour to explain my opinion upon the cause which leads to one kind of zymas being produced by one microzyma and another kind by another microzyma.

If there is the life of a microzyma, the life of a cellule and that of the organs of an anatomical system, there is also the life of the organized WHOLE. This necessarily results from the coordinated entirety of the particular lives of the organs and I hence of the individual lives of the microzymas which function in it. It is this view of the functions which Bichat called I he entirety of the functions which resist death.

But if the microzyma is physiologically imperishable, what is the death of the living whole? It is the opposite of that which constitutes its life, viz.: the absolute decoordination of the functions of the microzymas.

It is thus that in a part abstracted from a living animal, muscle or blood, etc., nothing is dead; but the microzymas, the only things antonomically living, being in decoordination, are no longer in their normal condition of existence; they now function only for themselves, determining the changes which attend the disorganizations of the tissues and the destruction of the cellules."
Now what is the meaning of the happy expression, "individual coefficient," introduced into medical language by M. Tripier? As in algebra a quantity is said to be a function of another upon which it depends, so in the microzymian theory it may be said that an organism, a cellule, are quantities which are functions of the microzymas which compose it and upon which it depends. Thus the expression of coefficient applied to the number which multiplies these quantities can be readily understood.

The individual coefficient is the factor which increases or diminishes in the microzymas the sum of the energy which enables them to resist the various causes which, by disturb­ing their functioning, determine morbidity in them, and thence disease and death.

The factor, whatever it may be, being the same, the variable, that is to say, the microzyma, differing, the result will necessarily vary. Now it is a proven fact, the microzymas are functionally different in the species, in the races and even in the individual, according to sex and age, in the different anatomical systems; the individual coefficient then is relative to the functional differences of the microzymas of the individual.

The state of perfect health results from the constancy and regularity of the coordinated functioning of all the organs the microzymas whereof are anatomically and physiologically healthy; for even, in the state of coordination, it is necessary to take into account heredity, diatheses, atavism, which may in some way have affected the particular microzymas of the individual.

The individual coefficient then is a complex constant dependent upon the particular coefficients of such or such functional systems of the individual.

To return to the blood, here is a typical example which justifies the above considerations.
I said that in anthrax (sang de rate) the bacteridia, regarded as specific cause, were the result of the vicious evolution of the microzymas of the blood, become morbid as the consequence of a decoordination, M. Jaccond would say, of some disturbance in the physiological functioning of the organism.

But it is evident that if the interior medium were inert or passive, this decoordination, in such a mixture of proximate principles, would be an effect without a cause, nothing leading it to become disturbed in its supposed functioning; for such a mixture has been shown to be unalterable of itself; while on the contrary it would immediately, infallibly, be placed in a condition of alteration determined by the agent, microbe, or specific ferment come from without. In short, on the hypothesis of a pure interior medium, a mixture of proximate principles, for a soil of culture, as it is called, for the microbe whose multiplication is poisonous, all the sheep would be equally susceptible, especially in times of epidemic, to contract anthrax (sang de rate) under identical circumstances, by contagion, and in all cases by inoculation.

Well, this does not happen. The adult sheep of the race called the African sheep is refractory to anthrax; it does not contract the disease by contagion, and generally not even by inoculation. The individual coefficient is not the same under identical circumstances, for the French sheep and for that of Africa. And as proof that the coefficient differs according to age, it is enough to state that the African lamb is not refractory, while the adult sheep of the same race is. Let us then say that the microzymas in the blood of the African adult sheep are among those which, even when ill treated, do not under­go that vicious alteration which would make them become carbuncular; with the lambs of the same race it is otherwise.

If the internal medium were the mixture imagined by microbian medicine, the foregoing facts would be incapable of explanation. For the medium would be inert and passive; since it has been proved that such a mixture is always disposed to allow the multiplication of the microzyma or of another like specific ferment able to alter it for its (the ferment's) own nourishment, and which medium without the ferment would be unalterable under other ordinary athmotelluric influences, cold, etc. It is the individual coefficient in relation to the functional differences of the microzymas of the subjects which alone explains the immunity of some, the susceptibility of others, since it has been demonstrated that in the interior medium there is nothing autonomically living, acting and physiologically impressionable except the microzymas.

In the language of the old medicine, immunity, susceptibility, is the capacity of the living organism to resist an impression, not to undergo, or to undergo the influence of external or internal agents. The microzymian theory adopts this thoroughly physiological language since it is only the microzymas of the living organism which can receive im­pressions and suffer or not suffer their influence; that is to say, resist or not resist the perturbing causes of their func­tioning according as the individual coefficient is abnormal or normal.

But what proof have we of this resistance, and of the mechanism of the harmlessness of the microzymas from without? The following is one I have given of it.

The isolated microzyma of beer yeast performs the function of a lactic ferment, producing little alcohol; in its function of anatomic element in the globule of beeryeast it never produces lactic acid. The young yeast, vigorous, acting strongly on cane sugar, even in contact with the air and with the addition of the chalk whose microzymas always effect lactic fermentation, still does not produce lactic acid; it resists, and microzymas of the chalk when added also fail to produce it.

But if the beer yeast be old, in some respect altered,a and even protected from the air, it will produce lactic acid, and the more, if calcareous rock or even pure carbonate of lime has been added. There we have the immunity of the beeryeast organism and its acquired susceptibility; the immunity which enabled it to resist the influence of the microzymas of the air and of the chalk, annihilating their influence; the susceptibility which enabled these microzymas to produce lactic acid without hindering those of the chalk in performing their work. Here we have the picture of the immunity and of the susceptibility of the microzymas of the cellules and of the tissues of the internal medium of an animal organism."a1

[a. The French text is aleree, which, I believe, to be a press error fur alteree.—Trans.)
[a1. We are here presented with a forcible illustration of the reckless ignorance of those physicians who practice the inoculation of organic poisons, such as the products of diseased conditions known as vaccines, anti-toxines, etc., upon man and other animals, whether as preventives or as remedies. Even the changes mentioned in the text, as some of the results of the learnedly devised experiments of Prof. Behamp, are unknown to these gentlemen; and, absolutely ignorant of what effect such inoculations may have upon the life forces, i.e., the microzymas of their victims, they arrogantly insist that their ignorance is learning, and induce a degeneration among those races who, recognizing their ignorance, place their faith in men as ignorant as themselves!—Trans.]
In microbian medicine the language of the old medicine is without meaning, since the former admits that one sole cause produces the disease and the alteration by fermentation of organic matter in general, making no distinction between the internal medium and a mixture of proximate principles.

The insuperable contradiction which exists between the microbian doctrines and the microzymian theory of the living organization brings into strong relief the justice of the aphorism of M. Tripier. A single cause for the disease and for the alteration or fermentation of proximate principles, however specific it may be, is no cause at all (est une cause nulle).

Yes, "the sole cause" is no cause, for I have demonstrated beyond dispute that there do not exist (I do not say germs, the word now is unsuitable) pre-existing microzymas, pathogenic or not; but there do exist microzymas, the living remains of bacteria derived by evolution from the anatomical microzymas of organisms which have disap­peared or are disappearing beneath our eyes.

I limit here these considerations, referring the reader to my earlier publications for developments, which the present work completes and corroborates.1
1. For general pathology, see the three last conferences of "Les Microzymas,"etc. For special pathology, the communications, "Sur la septicaemic puerperale," "Sur la Pleuresie" and "Sur les albuminuries," in "Microzymas et Microbes." And for the physiological theory of fermentation, as well as for the true theory of nutrition, various chapters of the same works. (Chamalet, publisher, 60, Passage Choiseul, Paris.)

And now I hope it will be confessed that the error, common to all contemporary experimenters who have sought to discover the cause of the phenomenon of the spontaneous coagulation of the blood, also that of other equally spontaneous alterations, or who, like M. Pasteur, maintain the natural inalterability alike of the blood, as of all natural organic matters, is that they have regarded protoplasm as a mixture of pure proximate principles, and have held as dogma that this mixture was living and organized, although not morphologically constituted. At last I hope that it will be recognized that the discovery of the microzymas verifies the time-honored conception of Bichat, according to which, that only is living in any organism whatever, which is structured, morphologically determinate.

It is the agreement of the microzymian theory of the living organism with the brilliant conception of Bichat which gives to the theory of the blood as a flowing tissue and to the physiological and anatomical theory of its coagulation and other spontaneous alterations their highest degree of certainty.

Under the form of conclusions is here given a succinct summary of the totality of the fundamental facts, the discovery whereof has led to that of the true anatomical and chemical constitution of the blood and to the explanation of its spontaneous alterations.
(1) Ordinary air, near the earth, contains living microscopical objects called germs, and these germs are essentially microzymas.

(2) Proximate principles, and any mixture of such principles are unalterable in the presence of water, of a limited volume of air at ordinary temperature when a little creosote has been first added; and such proximate principles under such conditions do not permit any organized being to appear.

(3) Natural organic matters, vegetable or animal, tissues and humors, under like experimental conditions, always change of themselves, by a phenomenon of fermentation, and at the same time the microzymas, give birth to vibrioniens by evolution.

(4) The fibrin of the blood is not a proximate principle; it is a false membrane containing microzymas, whereof the intermicrozymian gangue is a special­ized albuminoid substance.

(5) It is owing to its microzymas that fibrin decomposes oxygenated water, that it liquifies starch of amidon and that it can be dissolved, undergoing chemical change, in very dilute hydrochloric acid.

(6) The microzymas of fibrin in liquified starch undergo vibrionian evolution notwithstanding the presence of creosote.

(7) Fibrin liquifies spontaneously in carbolized water without the microzymas undergoing vibrionian evolution.

(8) The fibrinous microzymas are special; they can produce lactic and butyric fermentation in liquified starch.

(9) Natural albuminoid matters are mixtures, reducible by direct analysis into exactly defined proximate principles.

(10) The albuminoid matters reduced to proximate principles are very complex molecules composed of less complex ones, amides and their derivatives of the fatty and aromatic series. There exist of such less complex molecules, constituting an albuminoid molecule, quaternaries like urea, quinaries like taurine, which is sulphuretted; like hematosine, which is ferruginous; casein, in addition to the sulphuretted molecule, contains one which is phosphuretted; it has then six elements.

(11) There are several fibrins constituted as are those of the blood.
(12) There are a great number of different specific albumens which coagulation does not differentiate.

(13) The zymas are special albuminoid matters, likewise definable as proximate principles; they are always a functional product of the microzymas.

(14) The yellow liquid of the blood, besides its albumen, contains a haemozymas.
(15) The haemoglobin of the red corpuscle, reduced to a
definite proximate principle, decomposes oxygen­ated water by its noncomplex feruginous mol­ecule, haematosine, and becomes colorless.

(16) The red corpuscle of the blood is a true cellule, having a cell-wall and its proper content. This content is constituted especially of haemoglobin and micro-zymian-molecular-granulations, the microzymas whereof decompose oxygenated water as do those of the fibrin.

(17) The blood contains a third anatomical element, the haematic-microzymian-molecular-granularions. It is the albumenoid atmosphere of these granula­tions which form, by allotropic transformation, the intermicrozymian gangue of the false membrane called fibrin.
(18) The flowing tissue is a content, whereof the vessels, arteries, veins and their appendages form the container.

(19) The three orders of anatomical elements of the flowing tissue only find their conditions of existence complete in their containers during life.
(20) After issuing from the vessels these conditions of existence being no longer fulfilled, the alteration of the flowing tissue commences.

(21) The microzymas of the different parts of the circulatory system possess alike the property of decomposing oxygenated water without being absolutely characteristic of them, for the microzymas of almonds and of other parts of plants and of beer yeast also possess this property. But there are animal tissues whose microzymas do not disengagethe oxygen of oxygenated water.

(22) The microzymas, anatomical elements, are living beings of a special order without analogue.
(23) The spontaneous changes of natural animal matters, whether the microzymas have or have not undergone vibrionian evolution, thanks to free access of air, lead always under certain conditions to the complete destruction by oxydation of the product of those changes; that is to say, reduce them to the mineral condition, carbonic acid, water, nitrogen. But the microzymas under whose influence the oxydation is effected are not attacked; in such wise that all which is purely proximate principle in a tissue, in a cellule and in the bacterium, having undergone total destruction, the microzymas remain, and bear testimony to the existence of the vanished organization.

(24) The geological microzymas of certain calcareous rocks and of chalk, those of the dust of the streets and of the air also bear testimony to the microzymas which functioned as anatomical elements in the tissues of organisms of geological epochs even as they function in those of the present time.

(25) That which in the air have been called germs are essentially the microzymas of the entire destruction of a living organism.

(26) Normal air contains neither pre-existing germs nor the things which have been improperly termed microbes, supposed to ascend from age to age to parents resembling them.
(27) The air contains normally no pathogenic microzymas. The carbon bacteridium of Davaine is the product of the evolution of diseased microzymas, either of haematic-microzymian-molecular-granulations, or those of the blood globules.

(28) There is no living matter which is not morphologically defined; that which has been called protoplasm in the cellule always contains microzymas as anatomical elements.
Here, for persons whom it may interest, follows a list of memoirs and articles wherein may be found the historical succession of the ideas which have enabled the resume contained in the postface to be written:

On the influence which pure water or water charged with various salts exercise at a low temperature (a froid) upon cane sugar (moulds and spontaneous generations). Annales de chimie et de physique. 3e serie, Vol. XLVIII (1855 and 1856). C. R., Vol. XL, p. 436. and Vol. XLVI, p. 44, and Annales de chimie et de Physique, 3e serie. Vol. LIV, p. 28 (1858).
Memoir upon generations called spontaneous and upon ferments. Annales de la Societe Linne de Maine et Loire, Vol. VI (1863), and see C. R.. Vol. LVII. p. 958.
Note upon alcoholic fermentation. C. R,, de 1'Academic des Sciences, Vol. LVIII, page 601 (1864), and Montpellier Medical, Vol. XII.

Upon alcoholic fermentation. Reply to M. Berthelot C. R., Vol. LVIII, p. 1116 (1864).
On some new soluble ferments (Anthozymas). C. R.. Vol. LIX. p. 496 (1864).
On the origin of the ferments of wine. C. R,, Vol. LIX p. 626 (1864).
On the escape of heat as a product of alcoholic fermentation. C. R., Vol. LX, p. 241 (1865).
Memoir upon nefrozymase. Montp. Med.. Vols. XIV and XV.

On the cause which matures wines. C. R.. Vol. LXI. p. 408 (1865), and Vol. LXIX. p. 892 (1869).
On physiological exhaustion and on the vitality of beer-yeast. C. R., Vol. LXI, p. 689 (1865).
On the harmlessness of the vapors of creosote in the breeding of the silkworm. C. R. Vol LXII p 1341 (1866).

On the parasitic disease of the silk worm. C. R., Vol. LXIII. pp. 311, 341, 391, 425, 552, 693, 1 147 ( 1866), Vol. LXIV, pp. 231, 873,980, 1042, 1043. 1185 (1867); Vol. LXV, p. 42; Vol. LXVI, p. 1 160 (1868)-Vol I .XVII. pp. 102. 443 (1868); Vol. LXLX, p. 159 (1869).
(On the role of the calcareous earths in butyric and lactic fermentations, and of the living organisms which they contain (microzymas). C. R., Vol. LXIII, p. 451 (1866).
Microzymas in the waters of Vergeze. C.R.,Vol.LXIII, p.559, and Bull.Soc.Ch.,Vol.VI,p.9,and Vol. VII, p. 159 (1866).

On the role of the microscopic organisms of the mouth in digestion, and especially in the formation of the salivary diastase: in common with Prof. Estor and Saintpierre. Mont. Med., Vol. XIX

On the molecular granulations of fermentations and of the tissues of animals (microzymas). C. R., Vol I, XVI. pp. 366. 1382(1868).
On the nature and function of the microzymas of the liver; jointly with Prof. Estor. C. R,. Vol. UCVI, i I, 'I (IHftS).
On the origin and development of the bacteria; jointly with Prof. Estor. C. R.. Vol. LXVI, p. 859 (IHftH)

On the reduction of nitrates and sulphates in cenain fermentations. C. R., Vol. LXVI, p. 547 IIIU.H)
On the spontaneous alcoholic and acetic fermentation of eggs. C. R.. Vol. LXVII. p. 523 (1868).
On the microzymas of pulmonary tubercle in the cretacious state; jointly with Prof. Estor. C. R., Vol. LXVII. p 9600 (1868)

Facts to serve for the history of the origin of bacteria; natural development of these little plants in the frozen parts of several plants. C. R., Vol. LXVIII. p. 466; Mont Med., Vol. XXII, p. 320 (1869).
Conclusions relating to the nature of the mother of vinegar and the microzymas in general. C. R., Vol I XVIII, p, 877; Gazette Medicale de Paris, 8 May, 1869.

On the alcoholic fermentation by the microzymas of the liver. C. R., Vol. LXVIII, p. 1567 (1869).
Researches relating to the microzymas of the blood and the nature of fibrin; jointly with Prof. Estor. C.R Vol. LXIXp 713 (1869).

Note for use in the history of the microzymas contained in animal cellules; by Prof. Estor. C. R., Vol. LXVII, p 529
On the nature and origin of the blood globules; jointly with Prof. Estor. C. R, Vol. LXX, p. 265 (1870)

On the geological microzymas of divers sources. C. R., Vol LXX p. 914 (1870).
On the carbonic and alcoholic fermentations of sodic acetate and of ammonium oxalate. C. R., Vol. LXX. p 69 (1870).

See also:
On the circulation of carbon in nature and the instruments of this circulation; exposition of a chemical theory of the life of the organized cellule; by A. Bechamp, Paris, Asselin; Montpellier, Seguin.
Of the microzymas of the higher organisms; by Messrs. A. Bechamp and A. Estor. Mont. M ed., Vol. XXIV, p. 32.

Exposition of the physiological theory of fermentation, according to the researches of Prof. Bechamp, by M. Estor. Messager du Midi (1865).

[The student is to understand that the above list comprises but a small fraction of the scientific work of the late Professor A. Bechamp; a fuller list, though still imperfect, occupies eight of the large folio pages of the Moniteur Scientifique (Paris) for December, 1908, and these labors were spread over fifty-three years, from 1853 to 1905 inclusive. Genius, has been defined as, in one aspect at least, the "faculity for taking infinite pains," and this faculty was possessed by M. Bechamp in an almost infinite degree.

The world has yet to learn how much it owes to this remarkable genius. The acknowledgment will be resisted by all those interests which fatten upon the ignorance and trusting confidence of the people. But thanks to his researches and discoveries it cannot be long before the medical profession will recognise the dangerous errors into which it has been led by those who succeeded in establishing a "conspiracy of silence" around Bechamp and his discoveries.—Trans.]

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