Les microzymas
1883
Béchamp's summary of his doctrine. He holds that tiny granules he named microzymas, found in every animal and plant cell, are the basic living units: they carry out fermentation, can develop into bacteria when the surrounding medium changes, and outlast the organism they came from. The book draws on his sugar-solution experiments from the 1850s onward, in which mold growth and changes in the sugar were tracked in sealed and open flasks, and it disputes Pasteur's account that fermentation and disease come from germs arriving from the air.