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On the other hand, in what way ought this crushing to affect the hypothesis of hemi-organism? The crushed fruit ought to act quite as well, or even better than that which is uncrushed.
In 1864 Fremy devised the theory of hemi-organism, which meant nothing more than that he gave up Liebig's theory of 1843, together with the additions which Boutron and he had made to it in 1846; in other words, he abandoned the idea of albuminous substances being ferments, to take up another idea, that albuminous substances in contact with air are peculiarly adapted to undergo organization into new beings that is, the living ferments which we had discovered and that the ferments of beer and of the grape have a common origin.
This theory of hemi-organism was word for word the antiquated opinion of Turpin. * The public, especially a certain section of the public did not go very deeply into an examination of the subject. It was the period when the doctrine of spontaneous generation was being discussed with much warmth. The new word hemi-organism, which was the only novelty in M. Fremy's theory, deceived people.
Surely there is no ground for maintaining that they are produced by hemi-organism, since a medium composed of sugar, or chalk, or phosphates of ammonia, potash, or magnesia contains no albuminous substances. Now what bearing on this purely imaginary theory can the fact have, that a whole fruit, immersed in carbonic acid gas, immediately produces alcohol and carbonic acid?
As for seeing in these facts anything like a confirmation of the theory of hemi-organism, imagined by M. Fremy, the idea of such a thing is absurd.
In short, nothing can be more directly opposed to the theory of the mode of manifestation of that hidden force to which the name of hemi-organism has been given, than the discovery of the production of these phenomena of fermentation in fruits surrounded with carbonic acid gas; whilst the theory, which sees in fermentation a consequence of vital energy in absence of air, finds in these facts the strictest confirmation of an express prediction, which from the first formed an integral part of its statement.
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