PASTEUR, Louis.

(Paris). 4to 1025-1060. Later blue half morocco. With the Bookplate of Nils Fries. Pasteur’s article makes up pp. 1032-36. ”In December 1857 Pasteur published the first in a series of abstracts, notes, and letters on alcoholic fermentation that culminated in a long and classic memoir of 1860. Divided into two major sections, dealing respectively with the fate of sugar and of yeast in alcoholic fermentation, it inflicted on the chemical theory what Duclaux called ’a series of blows straight from the shoulder, delivered with agility and assurance.’ Pasteur established that alcoholic fermentation invariably produces not only carbonic acid and ethyl alcohol–as was well known–but also appreciable quantities of glycerin and succine acid as well as trace amounts of cellulose, ’fatty matters,’ and ’indeterminate products.’ On the basis of these results, Pasteur emphasized the complexity of alcoholic fermentation and attacked the tendency of chemists since Lavoisier to depict it as the simple conversion of sugar into carbonic acid and alcohol.” (Gerald L. Geison in ”Dictionary of Scientific Biography”)