Mémoire [MEMOIRE] Sur le Fermentation Alcoolique, Pasteur, Annales de chimie et de physique, 58, 1860, PP. 323-426 [LONG, CLASSIC MEMOIR ON ALCOHOLIC FERMENTATION]

Paris: Victor Masson, 1860. 1st Edition. FIRST EDITION OF PASTEUR'S DEFINITIVE PROOF THAT ALCOHOLIC FERMENTATION IS DUE TO THE ACTION OF A LIVING ORGANISM (yeast), and is not a purely chemical process as most chemists since. Lavoisier had believed. This work laid the foundation for the germ theory of disease and had significant implications for the fields of microbiology and biochemistry.



In December 1857, Pasteur published the first in a series of abstracts, notes, and letters on alcoholic fermentation. When his research was completed in 1860, he published the culmination of his work, the long and classic memoir offered here.



Pasteur divided this work 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 succinic acid as well as 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" (DSB, Vol. 10, p. 363). CONDITION & DETAILS: Paris: Victor Masson. Complete. Three full volumes, Volumes 58, 59, & 60, bound together in burgundy cloth, gilt-lettered at the spine; very slight toning to the boards. Ex. Library with NO spine markings & only a stamp on the front paste down & one on the title page. Clean & bright inside and out. Near fine condition.