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CHAPTER V.
mouth-bacteria as exciters of fermentation.

General Remarks.

]S'uMEROUS experiments and investigations from the time of
Schwann to the present day, and particnlarly the exact methods
of bacteriological research employed within the last few years,
have demonstrated beyond all donbt that all processes of fermen-
tation and putrefaction depend upon the presence of microscopi-
cally small living organisms. Nevertheless, certain authors, not
in dental literature alone, are in the habit of completely disre-
garding all the facts established in the last fifty years, putting
themselves back into the first half of the century and speaking
of putrefactive processes which are supposed to arise in some in-
explicable manner without the aid of micro-organisms, and to
yield certain products, among which bacteria themselves are not
unfrequently reckoned.
It is actually astonishing that the question, which is first, the
bacteria or the fermentation ? can still claim the attention of any
mind, and that irrefutable facts can be entirely overlooked,
although handbooks of bacteriology are so numerous and widely
circulated that ample information may be easily ol)tained in re-
gard to these fandamental questions. We are constantly con-
fronted by the statement that the decomposition of certain sul)-
stances may be efl^ected by means of finely divided platinum,
that alcohol may be directly oxidized to acetic acid. ]SIany
dentists also continue to refer to the possibility that acids may
develop during the putrefaction of organic substances in the
mouth without the participation of micro-organisms, and obsti-
nately ignore the fact that without micro-organisms the putre-
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