Starting with this idea, which was as yet a hyphothetical one, we began to wash our hands, glasses, etc., at first with very dilute sulphuric acid, and then with ammonia. Afterward we rinsed them with quantities of water and dried them carefully with white linen rags that had been used for no other purpose; and finally we plunged them again into very clean water. We thus cut the Gordian knot, and were on the right track.
In fact, on again repeating Mr. Dutrochet's experiments, with that minute care as to cleanliness that we had observed to be absolutely necessary, we saw crumble away, one after another, all the pieces of the scaffolding that this master had with so much trouble built up. The camphor moved in all our vessels, of glass or metal, and of every form, at all heights. The immersed bodies, such as glass tubes, table knives, pieces of money, etc., had lost their pretended "sedative effect" on a pretended "activity of the water," and on the vessels that contained it. The so-called phenomenon of habit "transported from physiology into physics," no longer existed.

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