62 



KNOWLEDGE & SCIENTIFIC NEWS. 



[March, 1907. 



creation. ITiat there was onl) one substance, and thai 

 all matter was ultimately derived from thai substance 

 has, 1 believe, been always a tacitly accepted axiom oi 

 scientific thought. But we look upon the more com 

 plicated structures as having been gradually built up 

 from the simpler ones. Hydrogen being the body 

 which has the lightesl atoms, and other bodies having 

 atomic weights which are approximately multiples ol 

 that of hydrogen, the thought was natural that hydro- 

 gen was, il not the ultimate atom, yet the body which 

 formed the bricks out of which other so-called elements 

 were built up. At last, however, we are able to watch 

 the actual formation of one element out of another, but 

 instead of the more complex bodies being formed out 

 of the simpler one, the reverse is the case, and one of 

 the lightest elements, helium, is evolved from one of 



the heaviest elements, radium. 



"Where we can follow the process of evolution, il 

 is therefore the complex body, which, through in- 

 stability, yields the simpler one. Scientific men love 

 to generalise, and it is therefore natural that they 

 should quickly have inverted their former ideas and 

 have begun to look at the must complicated structures 

 as the one which was formed the first.' If this idea is 

 driven to its extreme-— though not necessarily its logical 

 — limits, we should be led to the conclusion that living 

 organism is the primordial element, and that inanimate 

 matter is only the result of the decay of living matter. 

 This I gather to be Mr. Burke's view'. He compares, 

 indeed, the derivation of ordinary- matter from the 

 original bio-clement with the evolution of the solar 

 system, out of the historic, though now somewhat dis- 

 credited nebula. It is undoubtedly a new and an 

 original view, and one that must be taken seriously." 



I owe to Professor Schuster a deep debt of gratitude 

 for thus emphasising what many of my other friends 

 could not be made to understand. Many investigators 

 are as absorbed in their own special work as they are 

 indifferent to its relation with anything else. I say 

 this in all good faith, appreciating as I do the high 

 ■value an investigator's opinion in his own special, but 

 narrow, line of work may have. But the great discour- 

 agement which it can mete out to any scheme which 

 does not fit in with that which he himself may happen 

 to be engaged in, is not always stimulating or satis- 

 factory. New ideas, no doubt, require to be familiar- 

 ised. If they do not at first seem to be quite orthodox 

 — as new ideas seldom are — or if they are not alto- 

 gether on similar lines with those in which others have 

 been working, the promulgator thereof may expect to 

 have many bricks, like books and candlesticks of old, 

 flung at his wearied and bewildered head. 



Quite apart, then, from the question as to whether the 

 views I have ventured to put forward are orthodox or 

 heterodox, let us consider them in their relation to the 

 great problem which not merely biology, but physics 

 now presents, the asymmetric structure of living mat- 

 ter and the concomitant or inseparable connection be- 

 tween living matter and asymmetric structure. For as 

 living matter has never been produced from dead mat- 

 ter, as familiarlv understood, so polarising matter has 

 never been obtained except through the intervention 

 of that which is living or has lived. 



As we say, if the atomic and electronic systems have 

 been formed by a process of condensation of a 

 primordial substance, the transitory stages of spiral 

 nebula; is to be expected. But it may take many 

 thousand years to pass through this transitory stage; 

 even as the astronomical nebula; on the larger scale 

 take many million millions of years to be condensed 

 into a solar system. 



In such circumstances, then, the atomic ncbukc may, 

 for all intents and purposes, be regarded as entities as 

 much so as the individual atoms; unstable as these may 

 really be. Their spiral nature, however, would in cer- 

 tain circumstances rotate the plane of polarisation ol 

 light ; as, for instance, when the atoms are all right- 

 handed or left-handed. 



Now such spiral atoms, if they may be so called, will 

 in the course of time be converted into more stable 

 atomic systems, becoming radio-active, and ullimal K 

 inert. The latter being the lightest elements. C*£tr*<vo *$ a 



It is a curious circumstance that the principal con- 

 stituents of protoplasm are carbon, nitrogen, oxygen 

 and hydrogen, the lightest of each group. And that 

 silicon, phosphorus, sulphur, chlorine, etc., the second 

 lightest of the respective groups, come next, but in far 

 lesser proportions. 



This point is most suggestive, indeed. And the 

 formation of cellular protoplasm from such atomic 

 systems is rendered probable enough when we consider 

 the development of mimic or artificial cells in proto- 

 plasm by the action of radium salts upon it. Mr. 

 Rudge's experiments were made with gelatine, which 

 does not contain albumin or protoplasm. They do not 

 in any way touch the point in the argument. 



The complexity even in the nucleus itself would be 

 very great indeed, so much so that to account for its 

 great varieties and variations presents a difficulty far 

 exceeding anything that our imagination enables us to 

 picture to ourselves. 



This is the inference which analogy, extrapolation, 

 and experimental results may lead us to draw. I have 

 said elsewhere that "We may regard the ultimate 

 vital substance which seems to play so mysterious a 

 part in the phenomena of Nature as corresponding to 

 a state of matter which should be described as neither 

 molecular nor atomic, but of matter in the process of 

 becoming — a state of electronic, or really of biogenetic, 

 aggregation, from which matter in the course of time 

 has been evolved, the hiatus, the borderland or critical 

 state, between disintegrated and integrated electricity. 



" Biogen may be regarded as the immediate state 

 between free electricity and condensed electricity, which 

 we call matter — the hiatus between electricity as we 

 know it and matter as we know it. It may be looked 

 upon as the nuclear substance — in its ultimate form, as 

 the material in which the energy and potentialities of 

 the cell are stored, and from which they afterwards 

 emanate. It possesses those properties which enable 

 it in suitable environments to produce cells like the 

 artificial ones we have demonstrated. But it possesses 

 also the power of exciting vigorous metabolism, and of 

 developing into more divers forms. 



" This nuclear substance, consisting of biogen or the 

 ill-defined bioelements, is what I regard as the basis 

 of the manifold properties of living things we see 

 around us." 



This view of the phenomena of life shows us that it 

 is merely one phase in the never-ending series of grada- 

 tions. (j~ fr e continued.) 



Many are the causes to which the disturbances of digestion 

 during summer months are attributed, and they range from 

 the dust of the streets to the milk supply. Dr. Baldorini, of 

 Rome, adds another to the disturbing causes — the vessels in 

 which ice-cream is usually made. The linings of these re- 

 < eptacles consist of an alloy of tin and lead. The ingredients of 

 ice-cream dissolve this, and a certain amount of the lining of 

 the vessel finds ils way into the cream. A verv small amount 

 of lead, can, as the late Mr. Geoghegan said of strychnine. 

 cause the human subject to betray symptoms of grave per- 

 sonal inconvenience. 



