Name: Yeast
Rating: 3.52 (5 reviews)

18 reviews41 followers

December 18, 2016

This book is well written and very informative. Huxley chose to talk about yeast because it forms part of our everyday knowledge and expperience. It is one of "the simplest and the most familiar objects with which we are acquainted. " yet It is a substance, if examined with a little care, tends to open up considerable issues and theories. Huxley used techniques such as the comparative method to broadly explain some of those theories. He also gives examples of words synonymous with 'yeast' or 'fermentation' in other language, slightly diving into the words' etymology.

Thomas Henry Huxley was one of the finest comparative anatomist and one of the great autodidacts of the 19th century. He taught himself languages such as German, and was used by Charles Darwin as a translator of scientific material. He learned Latin, and enough Greek to read Aristotle in the original. He was skilled in drawing and did many of the illustrations for his publications on marine invertebrates. At twenty he passed his First M.B. examination at the University of London, winning the gold medal for anatomy and physiology.

quotes :

And it is a very curious thing to observe that all the names we have of this process, and all that belongs to it, are names that have their roots not in our present language, but in those older languages which go back to the times at which this country was peopled. That word ”fermentation” for example, which is the title we apply to the whole process, is a Latin term; and a term which is evidently based upon the fact of the effervescence of the liquid. Then the French, who are very fond of calling themselves a Latin race, have a particular word for ferment, which is ’levure’. And, in the same way, we have the word ”leaven,” those two words having reference to the heaving up, or to the raising of the substance which is fermented. Now those are words which we get from what I may call the Latin side of our parentage; but if we turn to the Saxon side, there are a number of names connected with this process of fermentation. For example, the Germans call fermentation--and the old Germans did so--”gahren;” and they call anything which is used as a ferment by such names, such as ”gheist” and ”geest,” and finally in low German, ”yest”;” and that word you know is the word our Saxon forefathers used, and is almost the same as the word which is commonly employed in this country to denote the common ferment of which I have been speaking. So they have another name, the word ”hefe,” which is derived from their verb ”heben,” which signifies to raise up; and they have yet a third name, which is also one common in this country (I do not know whether it is common in Lancashire, but it is certainly very common in the Midland countries), the word ”barm,” which is derived from a root which signifies to raise or to bear up. Barm is a something borne up; and thus there is much more real relation than is commonly supposed by those who make puns, between the beer which a man takes down his throat and the bier upon which that process, if carried to excess, generally lands him, for they are both derived from the root signifying bearing up; the one thing is borne upon men’s shoulders, and the other is the fermented liquid which was borne up by the fermentation taking place in itself.

"The old alchemists talked of the finest essence of anything as if it had the same sort of relation to the thing itself as a man’s spirit is supposed to have to his body; and so they spoke of this fine essence of the fermented liquid as being the spirit of the liquid. Thus came about that extraordinary ambiguity of language, in virtue of which you apply precisely the same substantive name to the soul of man and to a glass of gin!"

Nicolas Appert est un inventeur français. Il est le premier à mettre au point une méthode de conservation des aliments en les stérilisant par la chaleur dans des contenants hermétiques et stériles (bouteilles en verre puis boîtes métalliques en fer-blanc). Il crée en France la première usine de conserves au monde.

En 1787, Adamo Fabbroni avait déjà attribué la fermentation à une substance « végéto-animale » Fabbroni, dans son Ragionamento sull'arte di far vino (Florence), avait le premier soutenu que la fermentation du vin est produite par une substance vivante présente dans le moût.

Jean-Baptiste Van Helmont, est un alchimiste, chimiste, physiologiste et médecin . Il découvrit le gaz carbonique et le rôle du suc gastrique dans la digestion.

Charles Cagniard de Latour, En 1838, il montre comment multiplier, par bourgeonnement, la levure de bière et explicite son rôle dans la fermentation alcoolique ; il démontre ainsi que le processus de fermentation est due à des organismes vivants.

Antoni van Leeuwenhoek: connu pour ses améliorations du microscope et comme l'un des précurseurs de la biologie cellulaire et de la microbiologie. Dès 1674, il en tire de nombreuses et étonnantes observations — découverte des protozoaires, des spermatozoïdes — très en avance sur son temps. Il affirme aussi l'existence des bactéries.

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Yeast

Thomas Henry Huxley

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Thomas Henry Huxley

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