III.

Disproof of Spontaneous Generation

Fully aware of the presence of microorganisms in nature, Pasteur undertook several experiments designed to address the question of where these “germs” came from. Were they spontaneously produced in substances themselves, or were they introduced into substances from the environment? Pasteur concluded that the latter was always the case. His findings resulted in a fierce debate with the French biologist Félix Pouchet—and later with the noted English bacteriologist Henry Bastion—who maintained that under appropriate conditions instances of spontaneous generation could be found. These debates, which lasted well into the 1870s, although a commission of the Académie des Sciences officially accepted Pasteur’s results in 1864, gave great impetus to improving experimental techniques in microbiology.