146 LIFE: ITS NATURE AND ORIGIN 



pressing a sheet of tin foil against a coin and showing that the 

 coin produces a reverse impression on the foil on the near surface. 

 A duplicate of the coin contour is produced on the off surface, 

 and the significance of this will be referred to presently. Free dis- 

 cussion for several years having disclosed no opposing evidence or 

 reasonable alternative, a brief paper was offered for publication to 

 several American scientific journals; but publication was refused 

 on the advice of "referees." Realizing that the paper could not be 

 published here because of this opposition, it was sent to Proto- 

 plasma and was published by this journal in October, 1931, under 

 the title "Some Intracellular Aspects of Life and Disease." The 

 following quotations are from this paper. 



"Immunological specificity, like all other kinds of chemical speci- 

 ficity, is consequent on the outwardly directed electronic fields of 

 the units involved in precipitation, agglutination, lysis, etc. The 

 minimum sensitizing dose of egg albumin approximates 0.000,05 

 milligram; and in general the minute quantities of antigen demon- 

 strable by immunological methods cannot be detected by any other 

 known method. How shall we account for the potent effects of 

 such incredibly minute quantities, and also for the fact that if an 

 animal be bled, the temporary drop in the titer of antibodies in the 

 remaining blood is retrieved or even surpassed? Furthermore, the 

 blood of a non-sensitized animal may be used to replace the blood 

 of a sensitized animal, without impairing the sensitivity of the 

 animal or of its isolated tissues. 



"These facts point to the formation, within the cells themselves, 

 of neiv specific catalysts which are able to direct the formation of 

 antibodies. Three possibilities present themselves as the method 

 whereby specific antigens produce specific catalysts which in turn 

 determine specific antibody formation: (1) modification of a gene; 

 (2) modification of a non-genic catalyst; (3) fixation of the antigen 

 particle by a non-catalyst cytoplasmic particle in such a manner 

 that the combination functions as a specific catalyst. Nature may 

 utilize any or all of these methods, and perhaps others unthought 

 of at present. 



"All three of these possibilities involve the idea that the antigen 

 becomes an essential part of the directive surface of a catalyst 

 particle, which would tend to determine the formation of particle 

 groups having essentially a reverse of the electrostatic charge pat- 

 tern of the active catalyst surface and therefore of the antigen, or 

 else of particle groups which can acquire essentially such a reverse 



