Note on Bastian. [From The Nation 20.508 (24 March 1875): 208.] ⁴²

—The Saturday Review has recently noticed Dr. Bastion’s last experiments favorably; but the incompleteness of his induction of the death-point of bacterial germs will appear from the following considerations. Professor Wyman, having many years ago repeated the original experiments of Pasteur, arrived at the conclusion, as the result of his investigations, that one of two generalizations in biology must be given up: namely, the doctrine that all living beings are derived from germs, or the doctrine that all germs are destroyed by a wet heat of about 150 degrees Fahrenheit, and that direct inductive evidence was not sufficient for deciding which of these two propositions must be considered limited in its generality. There can be little question, however, that on general deductive or philosophical grounds, such as have doubtless determined the scepticism of Dr. Bastian’s critics, the eminent experimenter would not have hesitated as to which of the two doctrines he would limit as to its universality. The temperature at which life is destroyed is one of a class of empirical facts which would not be likely to have the precise generality which belongs to the other principle—omne vivum ex ovo— which Professor Huxley has claimed to be positively settled in biological science. And there are deductive physical reasons for believing that the action of heat on minute organic bodies, like those of infusoria, is not so disorganizing as upon larger organic bodies; so that it is possible that the germs, although paralyzed and injured by a heat necessarily less of course than that which would alter the chemical properties of the infusion itself, might yet so far retain life that their vigor might be more or less recovered under favorable circumstances. Dr. Bastian’s attempt, therefore, to submit the question of the death-point to a test experiment might have been objected to before the experiment was tried, as not ensuring these favorable circumstances, since the mineral salts in which the uninjured germs of bacteria will flourish may be unfavorable to the development of the paralyzed or partially disorganized ones; as is indeed indicated by the fact that the “test-fluids” were chosen because in them life does not arise without inoculation or the introduction of vigorous germs. In fact, it seems obvious that there is a perfectly legitimate hypothesis in this matter of which no experimental tests can be made. All that is undoubtedly proved is that bacteria, when subjected to a temperature of 140 to 100 degrees Fahrenheit, are so far injured as to be unable to recover upon such poor hospital-fare as Dr. Bastian’s test-fluids; ergo, id est non demonstrandum, and the position taken by Professor Wyman is still valid.