Béchamp or Pasteur? a Lost Chapter in the History of Biology

Abstract

THIS book is an attempt, not the first in recent years, to resuscitate the name of Bechamp and his microzmas theory, which was presumed to have been utterly demolished by the labours of Pasteur. The work is replete with extravagant language on the virtues of Bechamp and a tirade on the defects, if not vices, of Pasteur as an investigator. Bechamp is described as a “rare luminary of science,” “a supreme benefactor of humanity.” We are told that “he stood on an ethical plane above his fellows,” that “truth, not self, was Bechamp's lode-star,” and he is compared to Galileo. The solid fact remains that most of his work has been discredited as inaccurate, and although he wrote an immense amount, he plunged deeper and deeper into error. However high the opinion of the author is on the virtues of Bechamp, he has utilised a fair part of the book to exploit his own antimicrobic and antivaccination views.