Triumphs and wonders of the 19th century, the true mirror of a phenomenal era, a volume of original, entertaining and instructive historic and descriptive writings, showing the many and marvellous achievements which distinguish an hundred years of material, intellectual, social and moral progress .. . cal services in every branchof industry, the number of trained chemists has speedily increased. At thistime (1899) there are more than four thousand trained chemists in the UnitedStates. X. CHEMISTRY OF FERMENTATION. (>ur knowledge of fermentation and bacterial action is practically all com-pr
Triumphs and wonders of the 19th century, the true mirror of a phenomenal era, a volume of original, entertaining and instructive historic and descriptive writings, showing the many and marvellous achievements which distinguish an hundred years of material, intellectual, social and moral progress .. . cal services in every branchof industry, the number of trained chemists has speedily increased. At thistime (1899) there are more than four thousand trained chemists in the UnitedStates. X. CHEMISTRY OF FERMENTATION. (>ur knowledge of fermentation and bacterial action is practically all com-prised in the achievements of the nineteenth century. Prior to this time itwas known that fermentation took place, but its causes and character werewholly mysterious. The great work of Pasteur (1859) resulted in the factthat fermentations were chiefly caused by the activity of living cells, whichhave the capacity of reproduction. The most common form of fermentationis that whereby sugar is converted into alcohol and carbon dioxide. Thename of the organism that produces this change is saccharomyces cerevisiae. Another class of fermentation is seen in the process of digestion. Thisspecies of fermentation is typified by the action of sprouted barley on starch, THE CENTURYS PROGRESS IN CHEMISTRY 205. I-OUIS PASTEUK. whereby the starch is converted into sugar. The active principle of thesaliva, ptyalin, has the same property, and when starchy bodies are masti-cated, a part, at least, of the starch which they contain is ((inverted intosugar. The active principle of malt is known as diastase, and this, as wellas ptyalin, belongs to a class of fermentswhich are incapable of reproduction. All the decompositions of organic; mat-ter, such as the decay of meats and veg-etables, are now known to be forms offermentation, due to the action of certainorganisms known by the group name ofbacteria. This discovery led naturallyto the process of preserving organic com-pounds by sterilization. The pri
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