Antoine Bechamp Biography

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.