35« ANNÉE JANVIER 1918 N" 1 



ANNALES 



DE 



L'L\STITUT PASTEUR 



THE CHEMICAL lYIECHANISIYI OF REGENERATION 



by JACQUES LOEB 

 Member of the Rockefeller Institute for Médical Research, New York. 



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1 . — It is known that if a plant or a lower animal is mutilated 

 a new growth may take place by which the organism is once 

 more rendered more or less complète, and this process has been 

 termed régénération. The régénération of lost organs pro- 

 ceeds in plants usually from dormant buds near the wound, 

 whose growth is called forth as a conséquence of the muti- 

 lation. The phenomenon of régénération has been interpreted 

 in the purely verbal way by attributing to a plant or an animal 

 some kind of feeling for its proper form (Noll's morphœstesia ) or 

 by the présence in the organism of a mystical agency, the 

 « entelechy ». Weismann pointed out that régénération has 

 a sélective value since forms endowed with this power were 

 more likely to survive. Others ascribed régénération to a 

 « stimulating » etfect of the wound. Thèse and similar 

 altempts of explaining régénération need not occupy our 

 attention since they hâve notled to scientific results. 



The earlier biologists, Bonnet and Duhamel, had a more 

 chemical attitude towards the problem, assuming that a plant 

 contained two kinds of sap, an ascending one which carried 

 material for the shoot production, and a descending one 

 carrying material for root production. If the apex is eut off in 

 a plant, the ascending sap collecting near the eut will induce 



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