JUGGLING WITH LIFE 



glass may be cut from a dead animal, and even from 

 one that has hung for several days in cold storage. 

 This proves, obviously enough, that the bodily tissues 

 do not lose their vitality immediately after the death 

 of an individual organism. A decapitated chicken that 

 has hung three or four days in an ice chest is un- 

 equivocally dead, according to the ordinary meaning 

 of words. Yet various of its tissues may still be alive, 

 as the experiments of Drs. Carrel and Burrows show; 

 and may be not only kept alive but caused to develop 

 new cells, that is to say, to grow, as only living tis- 

 sues can do. 



PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS 



It would be difficult to overestimate the value of 

 this new method, as placing in the hands of the 

 physiologist and the practical physician and surgeon, 

 new means of testing remedies and new possibilities 

 of progress in scientific medicine. 



Within a few months of the time when the first 

 experiments were made, Professor Von Wassermann, 

 at Berlin, and Professor Ehrlich, in Frankfort, have 

 announced the discovery of drugs that attack cancer 

 cells in mice and cause the destruction of these malig- 

 nant tumors. It is understood that the experiments 

 which gave clues to the remedies that would thus 

 have a selective action on the cancer cells were made, 

 in part at least, with tissues grown outside the body 

 according to the method of Drs. Carrel and Burrows. 



This may be regarded as an augury of many other 

 therapeutic discoveries. Indeed we can scarcely 

 doubt that ultimately our knowledge of the effects of 



