Volume 2

Fragments of science : a series of detached essays, addresses, and reviews / by John Tyndall.

  • John Tyndall
Date:
1879
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Fragments of science : a series of detached essays, addresses, and reviews / by John Tyndall. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    469/508 (page 457)
    covers it like an impervious blanket. Where, tlien, does it get its vital oxygen ? From the sugar of the wort, which comes primarily from the sugar of the malt. The profession of the maltster consists in the proper develop- ment of this sugar from the grains of barley. The yeast fungus, failing to get oxygen from the air, turns its forces on the sugar, decomposes it, feeds upon its oxygen, grows and multiplies, and leaves two things behind as the rubbish of its toil. One of the two is carbonic acid, the other is alcohol. This was a great discovery, and it has proved the germ from which other great discoveries have sprung. By it we are brought to the threshold of a new era in medicine and surgery. But the inquiring mind of man has had a long struggle to clear itself from error and confusion and establish the truth thrrs far. In the infancy of thought men rapidly jumped to con- clusions. Among other things it was concluded that life was easily generated from dead matter. It was first imagined that creatures tolerably high in the scale of being, such as mice and snakes, could be thus generated. The maggots produced in meat were cited as a striking example of this spontaneous generation. One figure stands conspicuous in science as the extin- guisher of this error. This was Francesco Redi, whose Avork was executed 200 years ago. Our larder safes, made of fine metallic gauze, are all founded on the discovery of Redi that the maggots of flesh were pro- duced by flies which laid their eggs upon the flesh. The generation of maggots is not putrefoction. Flesh can putrefy without producing maggots. What, then, is ]nitrefaction ? The error of a great man usually implies the error of many smaller men who follow him ; and in relation to this subject an error of the illustrious chemist, Gay Lussac, spread itself for a time through science!