Yeast | Page 4

quality. To begin with it was
a mere sweetish substance, having the flavour of whatever might be the
plant from which it was expressed, or having merely the taste and the
absence of smell of a solution of sugar; but by the time that this change
that I have been briefly describing to you is accomplished the liquid has
become completely altered, it has acquired a peculiar smell, and, what
is still more remarkable, it has gained the property of intoxicating the
person who drinks it. Nothing can be more innocent than a solution of
sugar; nothing can be less innocent, if taken in excess, as you all know,

than those fermented matters which are produced from sugar. Well,
again, if you notice that bubbling, or, as it were, seething of the liquid,
which has accompanied the whole of this process, you will find that it
is produced by the evolution of little bubbles of air-like substance out
of the liquid; and I dare say you all know this air-like substance is not
like common air; it is not a substance which a man can breathe with
impunity. You often hear of accidents which take place in brewers' vats
when men go in carelessly, and get suffocated there without knowing
that there was anything evil awaiting them. And if you tried the
experiment with this liquid I am telling of while it was fermenting, you
would find that any small animal let down into the vessel would be
similarly stifled; and you would discover that a light lowered down into
it would go out. Well, then, lastly, if after this liquid has been thus
altered you expose it to that process which is called distillation; that is
to say, if you put it into a still, and collect the matters which are sent
over, you obtain, when you first heat it, a clear transparent liquid,
which, however, is something totally different from water; it is much
lighter; it has a strong smell, and it has an acrid taste; and it possesses
the same intoxicating power as the original liquid, but in a much more
intense degree. If you put a light to it, it burns with a bright flame, and
it is that substance which we know as spirits of wine.
Now these facts which I have just put before you--all but the last--have
been known from extremely remote antiquity. It is, I hope one of the
best evidences of the antiquity of the human race, that among the
earliest records of all kinds of men, you find a time recorded when they
got drunk. We may hope that that must have been a very late period in
their history. Not only have we the record of what happened to Noah,
but if we turn to the traditions of a different people, those forefathers of
ours who lived in the high lands of Northern India, we find that they
were not less addicted to intoxicating liquids; and I have no doubt that
the knowledge of this process extends far beyond the limits of
historically recorded time. 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