PASTEUR, (LOUIS). - THE DISCOVERY OF ANAEROBIC LIFE.

Animalcules infusoires vivant sans gaz oxygène libre et déterminant des fermentations.

(Paris, Mallet-Bachelier), 1861. 4to. No wrappers. In: "Comptes Rendus Hebdomadaires des Séances de L'Academie des Sciences", Tome 52, No 8. Pp. (321-) 368. (Entire issues offered). Pasteur's paper: pp. 344-347. Minor marginal brownspots.

First printing of a milestone paper in microbiology, being the paper in which Pasteur disclosed his discovery of organisms that lived without oxygen. Two years later he named them anaerobic or zymics, contrasting to aerobic which only lived in the presence of free oxygen.
"In 1861 he turned his attention to the butyric fermentation and made another importent discovery, viz. that this fermentation proceeds in the absence of oxygen. In the fermented material he found cylindrical rods, which he showed were the cause of the fermentation. Following the nomenclature and ideas of the time he regarded them as animal in character and named them Vibrio..." (Bullock "The History of Bacteriology", p. 61).

Order-nr.: 53357