THE ANIMAL A MACHINE 183 



in men and animals. Yet little enthusiasm for this im- 

 portant line of work has been aroused among scientists. 



When Dr. G. W. Crile first described the surprising prop- 

 erties of these oil-drops from fresh brain material, he desig- 

 nated them as "autosynthetic cells." No reference was 

 made to the fact that these cells are liquid throughout. 



The knowledge of this writer about "autosynthetic cells" 

 was not derived from the reports of Dr. Crile's clinic, but 

 rather from personal inspection of the experiments per- 

 formed there, and from repeating the experiments in- 

 dependently. In this work the writer had the invaluable 

 advice of Dr. R. Chambers of New York University, who is 

 extraordinarily expert on cell studies, and the inventor of 

 one of the methods of micromanipulation. (Micromanip- 

 ulation means the handling of the most diminutive objects- 

 such as cells — under the microscope by the help of an intri- 

 cate and delicate apparatus.) Dr. Chambers skillfully 

 demonstrated to the writer at Woods Hole in 1931, that 

 autosynthetic cells are nothing more than oil drops in spite 

 of all their life-like properties. 



The research workers of the Cleveland Clinic are not the 

 only ones who attempted to name some special type of 

 artificial cells. The same was done by A. L. Herrera of 

 Mexico who has made it his task to discover new artificial 

 structures of many sorts. He calls the entire field of his 

 activity "plasmogeny" and uses striking semi-zoological 

 names for whatever appears to him as particularly interest- 

 ing. His "colpoids," for instance, are oil-drops consisting 

 of motor gasoline and olive oil suspended in a water solution 

 of soda; they move around in much the same fashion as 

 other oil-drops, perhaps a little faster on account of the 

 addition of gasoline which flows very easily. Any zoological 

 nomenclature of this type is apt to produce the erroneous 

 impression that the objects are really alive; such an opinion 

 would hardly be upheld by a skilful experimenter like 

 Dr. Herrera. 



