Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1880 [PAGE 79]

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77 our information upon the newly observed fermentation in the living cells attacked with blight. Until about the beginning of our own century it was generally understood that, as soon as the influence of life was withdrawn, organic bodies began to decompose spontaneously, or without any external cause. It was supposed the vital forces had built up the compounds in opposition to the action of chemical and physical laws, and that the simple cessation of the former was sufficient to permit the latter to retransform the complex life-built bodies to simpler ones, or to the original elements. Willis* (1659) and Stahl (1697) held that an organic compound in a special state, was necessary to set up fermentation, which was accomplished by transmitting to the molecules of the fermentable body a peculiar motion by which new arrangements of the elementary substances were affected. In 1680 Leuwenhoeck first detected yeast in fermenting beer, but knew nothing of its nature; and it was not until about 1837 that the independent investigations of Latour, Schwann, Kiitzing, Turpin, Mitscherlich, and others, proved yeast to be a mass of living vegetable cells. The general result of the investigations of these scientists gave support to the idea, first correctly formulated by Latour, that the yeast cells caused such fermentation as occurs in the manufacture of beer and bread (Ann. Chim. Phys., 2nd series, vol. 68). This theory, supported as it was by so many careful investigations, ought, it now seems, to have, received the assent of scientific men. But this was not the case. From the very commencement of the discussions upon them, Latour's conclusions found a powerful opponent in one whose name at the time was a decided authority in chemistry, and whose influence is still strongly felt upon this and many other questions relating to the practical affairs of life. Justus Liebig had adopted, through Gay-Lussac, the explanations of Willis and Stahl, already noticed, and, by many brilliant experiments and illustrations, he extended and satisfactorily expounded the theory of fermentation through the communication of peculiar atomic motion in the elements of the fermentable compounds. The important experiments of Appert upon the preservation of animal substances, and of Gay-Lussac upon the freedom from fermentation of the juice of grapes excluded from the air, were cited and explained, and withal a very philosophical and seducing interpretation given of the obscure phenomena taking place in the transformations of what were supposed to be unstable organic bodies. Liebig, however, recognized the necessity of some external cause to introduce fermentation in a body in which it had not already begun. It could not arise spontaneously, and in the absence of an exciting cause decomposition of even the least stable organic bodies was known to be indefinitely postponed. He claimed that when the molecular motion was once excited, fermentation continued without further external agency, the motion already existing being communicated to the particles adjoining, from the latter to the next, and so on until the transformation was completed. The oxygen of the air was believed to be the most common exciting agent, hence it was simply necessary to exclude the latter, as in the ordinary processes

* The volume of the "International Scientific Series," by Schiitzenberger, "On Fermentation," contains a condensed history of the subject.