Pasteur performed careful experiments and demonstrated that the end products of alcoholic fermentation are more numerous and complex than those initially reported by Lavoisier. Along with alcohol ...

The silkworm infection experiments, and his success in reviving the silkworm colonies, undoubtedly left Pasteur better prepared to analyze the roles of microbes and hygiene in human disease.

Their ideas were largely ignored until Louis Pasteur carried out his own detailed experiments that disproved the chemical decomposition theory. Another popular theory of the time was spontaneous ...