Antoine Béchamp, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death

    

Antoine Béchamp

French scientist

Date of Birth: 16-Oct-1816

Place of Birth: Bassing, Grand Est, France

Date of Death: 15-Apr-1908

Profession: physician, chemist, biologist

Nationality: France

Zodiac Sign: Libra


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About Antoine Béchamp

  • Pierre Jacques Antoine Béchamp (October 16, 1816 – April 15, 1908) was a French scientist now best known for breakthroughs in applied organic chemistry and for a bitter rivalry with Louis Pasteur.Béchamp developed the Béchamp reduction, an inexpensive method to produce aniline dye, permitting Perkin to launch the synthetic-dye industry.
  • Béchamp also synthesized the first organic arsenical drug, arsanilic acid, from which Ehrlich later synthesized the first chemotherapeutic drug.
  • Béchamp's rivalry with Pasteur was initially for priority in attributing fermentation to microorganisms, later for attributing the silkworm disease pebrine to microorganisms, and eventually over the validity of germ theory.
  • Béchamp also disputed cell theory. Claiming discovery that the "molecular granulations" in biological fluids were actually the elementary units of life, Béchamp named them microzymas—that is, "tiny enzymes"-and credited them with producing both enzymes and cells while "evolving" amid favorable conditions into multicellular organisms.
  • Denying that bacteria could invade a healthy animal and cause disease, Béchamp claimed instead that unfavorable host and environmental conditions destabilize the host's native microzymas, whereupon they decompose host tissue by producing pathogenic bacteria.
  • While cell theory and germ theory gained widespread acceptance, granular theories became obscure.
  • Béchamp's version, microzymian theory, has been retained by small groups, especially in alternative medicine.

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