Abstract
IN the current number of the Royal Agricultural Society's Journal (vol. xxi. part i) is a full and able account of the work of the great French experimenter from an agricultural and veterinary point of view, by Dr. George Fleming. The development of Pasteur's genius is traced from his early chemical researches on dextro-andlsevo-tartratestofermentationsin milk and in malt. The combinationof microscopic with chemical modes of investigation led him to the definite determination of the part played by living organisms in acetic, butyric, and alcoholic fermentations. In these inquiries his own labours were almost entirely original, but it must not be forgotten that a few microscopists in England and many in Germany were working on the same lines, and contributed to the establishment of the modern doctrine that fermentation and putrefaction are both processes dependent on the presence and growth of minute parasitic plants. Pasteur's experimental investigations led him in two directions in one to the establishment of the now accepted theory of biogenesis: that every living thing is the product of a living parent; in the other to the practical application of the facts ascertained to the manufacture of vinegar and the process of brewing.
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Pasteur's Researches . Nature 34, 144–145 (1886). https://doi.org/10.1038/034144b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/034144b0