Recent Researches on Saccharomycetes

Abstract

THE development of bacteriology is closely linked together with the advances made in our knowledge of fermentation, which was first placed, on a truly scientific basis through the far-reaching investigations of Louis Pasteur in his “Etudes sur la bière.” He propounded the doctrine that every fermentation and putrefaction is caused by micro-organisms. This is an accepted theory now, if by fermentation we understand alcoholic fermentation. For there are other processes of fermentation which are produced by unorganised substances, whose chemical nature is as yet undefinable, such as ptyalin, pepsin, trypsin. The part played by micro-organisms as ferments in disease is still shrouded in mystery. At one time it was thought that they produce a specific lesion by means of basic bodies allied to the vegetable alkaloids, but differing from them in chemical composition and reactions, to which the name “ ptomaines” was given, and which were carefully investigated by Brieger. When Hankin discovered an albumose amongst the metabolic products of anthrax bacilli, the ptomaines were regarded with suspicion, and toxalbumins in the form of albumoses, peptones, globulins, separated from artificial cultures of pathogenic bacteria, and pronounced to be the true toxins. The fact that in snake venom and some vegetable poisons, such as abrin and ricin, similar toxalbumins were obtained, lent still further interest to the whole question, and our path seemed perfectly clear. Duclaux, of Paris, at all times raised objections of great weight against this conception of toxalbumins, and the recent works of Buchner, Sidney Martin, and others tend to show that the toxins of most pathogenic micro-organisms are ferment-like bodies, not reacting as ordinary albumoses, peptones, globulins, or albumins when the germs are grown in non-albuminous substances.

Micro-Organisms and Fermentation.

By Alfred Jörgensen (Copenhagen). Translated from the third edition in German by A. K. Miller and E. A. Lennholm, and revised by the author. (London: F. W. Lyon, 1893.)