BIO-RADIOACTIVITY, EOBES, RADIOBES 77 



tion of living organisms in bouillon gelatine by placing on it crystals 

 of the bromide of both barium and radium. Later in the same year^*' 

 he claimed to have secured a kind of spontaneous generation by 

 radium. By the contact of certain crystalloids with organic colloids, 

 there are obtained, he says, granulations, or vacuolides, possessing 

 the optical and morphological characters of simple life, more rudi- 

 mentary than bioproteon, or living matter. These bodies arise, grow, 

 divide, grow old, and die, returning to the crystalline state like all liv- 

 ing things, and Dubois applied to them the generic term eobe (dawn of 

 life). Eobes are held to form the transition between the organic and 

 the inorganic world. In his essay "^ on " La radioactivite ei la vie," he 

 elaborates the hypothesis that the energy irradiated by living beings 

 has two distinct origins — one from the environment, and one ances- 

 tral or hereditary. By their " ancestral energy " living beings are 

 similar to radioactive bodies. They both give off heat rays, light, 

 chemical rays, electricity, and possess molecular motion, and atomic 

 and other movements. 



Leduc's ^*'' ^^ profession to have created life was controverted by 

 Bonnier,^" Charrin and Gaupil,^'' and by Kunstler,^'^ in 1907. 



The most extravagant claims made in this direction are those of 

 Burke '^"^'', whose observations on the spontaneous action of radio- 

 active bodies on gelatine media form the basis of a voluminous work 

 entitled *' The Origin of Life." While these experiments have little 

 of the scientific importance they have been held to possess in the 

 popular mind, it is desirable to state, in Burke's own words, what he 

 did, and his own interpretation of the results. 



" An extract of meat of i lb. of beef to i liter of water, together 

 with I per cent, of Witter peptone, i per cent, of sodium chloride, 

 and 10 per cent, of gold labelled gelatine was slowly heated in the 

 usual way, sterilized, and then cooled. The gelatine culture medium 

 thus prepared, and commonly known as bouillon, is acted upon by 

 radium salts and some other slightly radioactive bodies in a most 

 remarkable manner." ^^ 



When the mixture above described was placed in a test-tube and 

 sterilized, and the surface sprinkled with 2.5 gr. of radium bromide 

 (activity not given), after 24 hours (three to four days when radium 

 chloride was used), " a peculiar culture-like growth appeared on the 

 surface, and gradually made its way downwards, until after a fort- 

 night, in some cases, it had grown nearly a centimeter beneath the 

 surface." From this growth Burke was not able to make sub- 



