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Updated: May 26, 2025
These would be very different, at least physiologically, the former being anaerobian, that is to say, requiring no air to enable them to live, and being killed by oxygen, should it be dissolved in the liquid to any considerable extent."
Ferments, therefore, only possess in a higher degree a character which belongs to many common moulds, if not to all, and which they share, probably, more or less, with all living cells, namely the power of living either an aerobian or anaerobian life, according to the conditions under which they are placed.
It seems impossible to deny that we have here a case of the adaptation of an organism to the gradual contamination of the medium; and so it may likewise happen that the anaerobian vibrios of a butyric fermentation, which develop and multiply absolutely without free oxygen, perish immediately when suddenly taken out of their airless medium, and that the result might be different if they had been gradually brought under the action of air in small quantities at a time.
If these precautions are neglected, it is scarcely possible to secure a successful fermentation in our flasks, because the yeast sown is immediately held in check by a development of anaerobian vibrios. For greater security, we may add to the fermentable liquid, at the moment when it is prepared, a very small quantity of tartaric acid, which will prevent the development of butyric vibrios.
The greater part of the 2.25 grammes, therefore, had evidently been produced as the growth of an anaerobian plant. Ordinary fungi likewise require large quantities of oxygen for their development, as we may readily prove by cultivating any mould in a closed vessel full of air, and then taking the weight of plant formed and measuring the volume of oxygen absorbed.
Hence we are forced to regard them as a distinct species; and so it is possible that there may likewise be aerobian and anaerobian vibrios without any transformation of the one into the other. The question has been raised whether vibrios, especially those which we have shown to be the ferment of butyric and many other fermentations, are in their nature, animal or vegetable. M. Ch.
In denouncing the impossibility, as he considered it, of a ferment living without air or oxygen, and so acting in defiance of that law which governs all living beings, animal or vegetable, Dr. Brefeld ought also to have borne in mind the fact which we have pointed out, that alcoholic yeast is not the only organized ferment which lives in an anaerobian state.
We must not forget, however, that aerobian torulae and anaerobian ferments present an example of organisms apparently identical, in which, however, we have not yet been able to discover any ties of a common origin.
Air is only present in the earlier developments of their germs, and without attracting the attention of the operator, whilst in their state of anaerobian growth their life and action are of prolonged duration.
When surrounded with air, they live in their aerobian state and we have no fermentation; immersed immediately afterwards in carbonic acid gas, they now assume their anaerobian state, and at once begin to act upon the sugar in the manner of ferments, and emit heat.
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