Note 131 — Chapter VI · THE PHYSIOLOGICAL THEORY OF FERMENTATION.

Pasteur, Mémoire sur la fermentation alcoolique, 1860; Annales de Chimie et de Physique. The word globules is here used for cells. In our researches we have always endeavoured to prevent any confusion of ideas. We stated at the beginning of our Memoir of 1860, that: “We apply the term alcoholic to that fermentation which sugar undergoes under the influence of the ferment known as beer yeast.” This is the fermentation which produces wine and all alcoholic beverages. This, too, is regarded as the type for a host of similar phenomena, designated, by general usage, under the generic name of fermentation, and qualified by the name of one of the essential products of the special phenomenon under observation. Bearing in mind this fact in reference to the nomenclature that we have adopted, it will be seen that the expression alcoholic fermentation cannot be applied to every phenomenon of fermentation in which alcohol is produced, inasmuch as there may be a number of phenomena having this character in common. If we had not at starting defined that particular one amongst the number of very distinct phenomena, which, to the exclusion of the others, should bear the name alcoholic fermentation, we should inevitably have given rise to a confusion of language that would soon pass from words to ideas, and tend to introduce unnecessary complexity into researches which are already, in themselves, sufficiently complex to necessitate the adoption of scrupulous care to prevent their becoming still more involved. It seems to us that any further doubt as to the meaning of the words alcoholic fermentation, and the sense in which they are employed, is impossible, inasmuch as Lavoisier, Gay-Lussac, and Thénard have applied this term to the fermentation of sugar by means of beer yeast. It would be both dangerous and unprofitable to discard the example set by those illustrious masters, to whom we are indebted for our earliest knowledge of this subject.