JEFFRIES WYMAN 195 



cate the possibility of the reappearance of life after treatment and 

 under conditions that were supposed to be fatal. But in the later 

 series (1867), when the solutions were boiled for five consecutive 

 hours, living organisms did not afterward appear therein. Two 

 years later, under date of November 25th, 1869, ne wrote: "After 

 five hours boiling all flasks fail to sustain life. Nevertheless, 

 while I do not believe spontaneous generation proved, I by no 

 means consider it disproved." What a perfect illustration of the 

 aphorism of his friend and colleague, Asa Gray (I quote from 

 memory): "Upon many subjects a truly wise man remains long 

 in a state of neither belief nor unbelief; but your intellectually 

 short-sighted person is apt to be preternaturally clear-sighted, 

 and to find his way very promptly to one side or the other of every 

 mooted question." 



Wyman was early interested in the study of monsters, not so 

 much as curiosities as because he felt the truth of Goethe's axiom, 

 "It is in her mistakes that Nature reveals her secrets;" his account 

 of a double fetus 1 concludes with a discussion of the proximate 

 causes of organic arrangement: 



"The force, whatever it be, which regulates the distribution of 

 matter in a normal or abnormal embryo always acts symmet- 

 rically; and, if we look for any thing among known forces analo- 

 gous to it, it is to be found, if anywhere, in those known as polar 

 forces. The essential features of polarity, as in symmetry, are 

 antagonism either of qualities or forms. Studying the subject in 

 the most general manner, there are striking resemblances between 

 the distribution of matter capable of assuming a polar condition, 

 and free to move around a magnet, and the distribution of matter 

 around the nervous axis of an embryo." 



Closely associated with these considerations is the problem of 

 the relationship between the arms and legs, to which he had long 

 given much thought, and upon which he published a very remark- 

 able paper. 2 The opening words are as follows: 



1 Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, March 29, 1866. 



2 On Symmetry and Homology in Limbs. Proc. Boston Soc. Nat. Hist., 

 June 5, 1867, p. 32. 



