Microbes & toxins / by Étienne Burnet ; with a preface by Élie Metchnikoff ; tr. from the French by Charles Broquet and W.M. Scott.

  • Burnet, Etienne, 1873-1960.
Date:
1912
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Microbes & toxins / by Étienne Burnet ; with a preface by Élie Metchnikoff ; tr. from the French by Charles Broquet and W.M. Scott. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    24/342 (page 6)
    Pasteur discovered the transformation of the lactate into the butyrate by the butyric vibrio; tbe butyrate can be completely consumed in its turn by the moulds. I he glucosides (compounds of sugar with an organic body, an alcohol or phénol) are decomposed into their two éléments. A diastase, tannase, secreted by the Aspergillus, splits tannin into two molécules of gallic acid, from which other moulds produce again carbonic acid and water. Just as there is not one starch but several, so there are several celluloses, which resemble starches but are more stable : (C6H10O5)„. They form the walls of vegetable cells, and make up one-third of the weight of the straw, which is the principal component of farmyard manure. If the celluloses Fio. i.—The microbe which ferments cellulose, described by Omeliansky: bacilli with spores. were not decomposed and restored to circulation, the earth would soon be cumbered with useless refuse material. But from the beginning moulds establish themselves on the outerskinof the living plant ; when it dies they invade its tissues, attacking first the sugar and then the cellulose, the latter beinghydrolysed, transformed into sugars and consumed. The B. Amylobacter of Van Tieghem, an anaerobe, produces from cellulose hydrogen, carbonic acid and butyric acid. Omeliansky has demonstrated two methods of anaérobie fermentation in cellulose, one with production of hydrogen, the other with production of methane. Those ferments which in a tube in the laboratory décomposé the cellulose of Berzelius’ paper, act in precisely the same way in manure heaps. The aérobic fermentation of cellulose is carried on by moulds, by fungi