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Updated: June 29, 2025
The semi-tropical sun was waking strange ferments in the placid Friesland blood, and producing a race who added the turbulence and restlessness of the south to the formidable tenacity of the north. Strong vitality and violent ambitions produced feuds and rivalries worthy of medieval Italy, and the story of the factious little communities is like a chapter out of Guicciardini.
From the day when we first proved that it is possible for all organized ferments, properly so called, to spring up and multiply from their respective germs, sown, whether consciously or by accident, in a mineral medium free from organic and nitrogenous matters other than ammonia, in which medium the fermentable matter alone is adapted to provide the ferment with whatever carbon enters into its composition, from that time forward the theories of Liebig, as well of Berzelius, which M. Robin formerly defended, have had to give place to others more in harmony with facts.
The human mind, however, is not the subject of similar investigation; we are able to discover no virus by which it is contaminated no spreading rottenness no morbid leaven that ferments, or canker that corrodes it.
The strain of barbaric blood which still ferments in many populations of Central Europe constituted it is true a standing menace; but no one dreamt that the threat was about to be followed, lightning like, by facts, and that we were on the eve of a catastrophe. Europe had forgotten what hunger meant.
"In the course of the discussion which took place before the Academy upon the subject of the generation of ferments properly so-called, there was a good deal said about that of wine, the oldest fermentation known. On this account I decided to disprove the theory of M. Fremy by a decisive experiment bearing solely upon the juice of grapes.
The toxins cause coagulation-necrosis of the tissue cells with which they come in contact, the ferments liquefy the exudate and other albuminous substances, and in this way pus is formed.
We may here say a few words respecting M. Bechamp's claim to priority of discovery. It is a well-known fact that we were the first to demonstrate that living ferments might be completely developed if their germs were placed in pure water together with sugar, ammonia, and phosphates.
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.
The alcoholic ferments, therefore, present themselves to us as plants which possess at least two singular properties: they can live without air, that is without oxygen, and they can cause decomposition to an amount which, though variable, yet, as estimated by weight of product formed, is out of all proportion to the weight of their own substance.
Such was the character of their spirit, in its occasional ferments at home; and it burst commonly with a suitable violence and force, against their foreign rivals and enemies. The amiable plea of humanity was little regarded by them in the operations of war. Cities were razed, or enslaved; the captive sold, mutilated, or condemned to die.
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