6 GERMINATION 



great credit upon the brilliant young scientist who made 

 them and constitute a valuable addition to our knowledge, 

 but — there is nothing whatever in them to justify the conclu- 

 sion that life is merely a product of chemical reaction. 



In the first place, every animal, and vegetable, cell is a 

 self-contained piece of electrical apparatus, the chemical 

 processes of which are dependent upon its response to body 

 energy, vis nervosa, neuro-electricity ; call it what you will. 



Secondly, everything that is moist possesses capacity 

 and also true electrostatic capacity, though in the latter 

 case power to retain charge is directly with its absolute 

 insulation. By capacity I mean the ability to absorb 

 electrical charge from some outside source of energy, and in 

 this case the outside source is the atmosphere. There is 

 no reason that I can see why, given a measure of natural 

 energy, excised cells should not grow. 



Even without the energy of which I have made mention 

 growth should continue at body temperature in the presence 

 of blood plasma because iron is contained in the nucleo- 

 proteins of plant and animal cells and in the proteins of 

 blood plasma. Iron is fifth in the list of electro-positives 

 and oxygen the most active of electro-negatives. The two, 

 in combination with the salts of plasma as an exciting 

 solution are capable of generating electricity, or some force 

 akin to it, and so supplying the vis nervosa. 



We cannot call this a chemical phenomenon. If it is an 

 indication of life, then it is the vis nervosa that gives it. 

 It is rather a manifestation of electrical energy than of 

 chemical reaction and I am quite sure that if the iron content 

 of the cells and of the plasma could be removed or, preferably, 

 experiments tried in vacuo, no growth could possibly take 

 place. 



Moreover, that is not my conception of life. If Dr. 

 Carrel had taken pieces of skin, of liver, of heart, of kidney, 

 of spleen, of thyroid and other glands, of muscle and bone, 

 and cartilage of, say, a chicken, placed them in an incubator 

 and produced a hen capable of laying an egg, or a cock that 

 could crow, we should have no option but to agree that he 

 had done a very wonderful thing. Nevertheless, it would 



