BORDERING THE MYSTERIES OF 

 LIFE AND MIND 



THE morning journals of New Year's, 1902, brought 

 tidings from the meeting of American physiologists 

 at Chicago that sent many a mind travelling back 

 to the strange news which had come out of Germany 

 just seven years before. Then, from the secluded 

 University of Wiirzburg, came word of Professor 

 Rontgen's discovery of his magic rays, that can lay 

 bare the interior of our bodies, pierce solid metals, 

 souls too, perhaps. Seldom had there been so 

 dramatic a step into the invisible and unknown. 

 The man of science marvelled not less than the man 

 in the street. 



The papers that were read at Chicago were equal- 

 ly of a sort to stir the imagination of laymen and 

 the elect alike. One, by Dr. Jacques Loeb, bore 

 on the preservation of living substance from decay. 

 A second, from the same source, dealt with the more 

 intimate nature of the life processes, and tended to 

 show that vitality and electricity are possibly 

 one and the same. A third, by Dr. A. P. Mathews, 



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