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The more we advance, the more clearly we are able to detect these differences. We may add in praise of M. Bouchardat's sagacity, that that skilful observer has always considered these results as a proof that alcoholic fermentation is dependent on the life of the yeast-cell, and that a distinction should be made between the two orders of fermentation.
And it can hardly be questioned that this singular excitation of fermentation in one fluid, by a sort of infection, or inoculation, of a little ferment taken from some other fluid, together with the strange swelling, foaming, and hissing of the fermented substance, must have always attracted attention from the more thoughtful.
Passepartout wandered for several hours in the midst of this motley crowd, looking in at the windows of the rich and curious shops, the jewelry establishments glittering with quaint Japanese ornaments, the restaurants decked with streamers and banners, the teahouses, where the odorous beverage was being drunk with saki, a liquor concocted from the fermentation of rice, and the comfortable smoking houses, where they were puffing, not opium, which is almost unknown in Japan, but a very fine, stringy tobacco.
This fermenting gas is the home of the bacillus, and from it millions of germs are multiplied and pass into the circulation. In this fermentation a peculiar worm is bred, which is the cause of ulceration in the bowels of typhoid patients. To give physic in a typhoid fever case is a grave mistake. Instead of assisting Nature, it more probably hastens the death of the patient.
This has been since demonstrated, by attentively observing that it always begins with a motion of acid fermentation, which is produced by the mucilaginous substance.
It is since the appearance of these two works of ours that the preponderating influence of the life of microscopic organism in the phenomena of fermentation has been better understood. Immediately after their appearance M. Bechamp, who from 1855 had made no observation on the action of fungoid growths on sugar, although he had remarked their presence, modified his former conclusions.
The yeast consumes a great deal of the nutritive part of the flour. This may amount to from 5 to 8 per cent. of the food value, and I have read that sometimes it is as high as 20 per cent. Liebig said that the fermentation destroyed enough food material daily in Germany to supply 400,000 people with bread.
In this manner it is possible to introduce as small a quantity of yeast as we wish, a quantity the weight of which, we may say, is hardly appreciable. The yeast sown multiplies rapidly and produces fermentation, the carbonic gas from which is expelled into the mercury. In less than twelve days all the sugar had disappeared, and the fermentation had finished.
But the transference of the minute causalities of life into fiction was systematized by him. He made the thing an artistic method, using it with the same power, though not the same chasteness, as George Eliot after him. His employment was not very logical how could it be when the guiding mind was in chronic fermentation?
The soluble portion of a like quantity of 5 grammes of the same yeast caused the fermentation of 10 grammes of sugar in nine days, after which the yeast developed by the sowing was likewise exhausted."
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