Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 21, 2025
So that M. Pasteur arrived at last at the clear and definite result, that all these appearances are like the case of the worms in the piece of meat, which was refuted by Redi, simply germs carried by the air and deposited in the liquids in which they afterwards appear.
Out of the eater came forth meat, And out of the strong came forth sweetness. Against all odds, however, Redi, strong with the strength of demonstrable fact, did splendid battle for Biogenesis; but it is remarkable that he held the doctrine in a sense which, if he lead lived in these times, would have infallibly caused him to be classed among the defenders of "spontaneous generation."
Moreover, the grubs seem satisfied with the queer dish which my curiosity prescribes for them; they thrive amidst the victuals and undergo their transformation into pupae. The conclusion, therefore, is much more general than Redi imagined. Any meat, no matter whether of a higher or lower order, suits the bluebottle for the settlement of her family.
So that M. Pasteur arrived at last at the clear and definite result, that all these appearances are like the case of the worms in the piece of meat, which was refuted by Redi, simply germs carried by the air and deposited in the liquids in which they afterwards appear.
Then came Redi, and he proceeded to upset the doctrine in a very simple manner. He merely covered the piece of meat with some very fine gauze, and then he exposed it to the same conditions.
At any rate there is no doubt whatever as to the other persons now to be mentioned in connection with the controversy, which again became active about a century after Redi had published his book. The antagonists on this occasion were both of them Catholic priests, and both of them deserve some brief notice. He was educated at Douay and ordained priest at Cambray in 1738.
Redi's book went through five editions in twenty years; and the extreme simplicity of his experiments, and the clearness of his arguments, gained for his views, and for their consequences, almost universal acceptance. Redi did not trouble himself much with speculative considerations, but attacked particular cases of what was supposed to be "spontaneous generation" experimentally.
Let it suffice to say that they were on the lines first laid down by Redi and greatly elaborated by Spallanzani, namely the exclusion from the fluids or other substances under examination of all possible contamination by minute organisms in the air. Spallanzani knew nothing of these organisms; they were not discovered until many years after his death.
It appears to me impossible to rise from the perusal of those publications without a strong conviction that the lamentable mortality which so frequently dogs the footsteps of the most skilful operator, and those deadly consequences of wounds and injuries which seem to haunt the very walls of great hospitals, and are, even now, destroying more men than die of bullet or bayonet, are due to the importation of minute organisms into wounds, and their increase and multiplication; and that the surgeon who saves most lives will be he who best works out the practical consequences of the hypothesis of Redi.
The famous Italians, Redi and Spallanzani, had led the way in their experiments, and the latter had reached the conclusion that there is no vegetable and no animal that has not its own germ. But heterogenesis became the burning question, and Pouchet in France, and Bastian in England, led the opposition to Pasteur.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking