HEREDITY FROM PHYSICO-CHEMICAL POINT OF VIEW. 85 



features of organic growth as the variation of the latter with the 

 conditions (e. g., temperature or the supply of food and oxygen), 

 its dependence on function, and the possibility of regression. 

 Further, it must be a process not necessarily peculiar to living 

 organisms, although apparently taking place under especially 

 favorable conditions in these systems, and it must be able to 

 effect either chemical decompositions or syntheses. All of these 

 peculiarities seem to point to some physico-chemical process of 

 the general nature of electrolysis as underlying the synthetic 

 activity of organisms. In other words the possibility presents 

 itself that electrosynthesis is the chief method of construction in 

 the living system. 



The main physiological facts which appear to me to favor this 

 hypothesis are briefly as follows. All functional activity is 

 associated with the formation of electrical circuits between dif- 

 ferent regions of the cell or organism. The currents of these 

 bioelectric circuits are in many cases sufficiently intense to pro- 

 duce marked physiological effects upon other cells or tissues 

 (stimulation, etc.), and presumably they have similar effects 

 upon other regions of the same cell ; the transmission of the effects 

 of local excitation appears in fact to be due to an action of this 

 kind. In general we observe vital functions to be profoundly 

 influenced accelerated, inhibited, or initiated by electrical 

 influence; and since function involves specific construction, the 

 constructive process must be subject to similar influence. Ex- 

 perimental data upon the influence of the electric current on 

 growth processes are as yet comparatively few; but galvanotro- 

 pism is well known in plants, and with properly devised experi- 

 mentation could probably be shown to be widespread. The 

 control of growth processes by the electric current offers in fact 

 a largely untouched field of investigation, which would probably 

 yield results not only of great theoretical interest but of practical 

 importance as well (e. g., as possibly affording a means of con- 

 trolling malignant growths, etc.). 



But perhaps the clearest indications that the organic formative 

 processes are under the control of electrical conditions are seen 

 in the striking resemblances which certain types of electrolytic 

 deposit show, both in their structural character and in the con- 



