NA TURE 



THURSDAY, AUGUST i, 1901. 



SPECULATIVE BIOLOGY. 



Les Prohllmes de la Vie. Essai cVum interprc'tation 

 scientifique de phenomines vitaux. V Partie. La 

 Substance Vivante et la cytodierese. By Dr. Ermanno 

 Giglio-Tos, of the University of Turin. Pp. viii + 286. 

 Thirty-three figures. (Turin : Chez I'auteur, Palais 

 Carignano, 1900.) Price, 10 francs. 



AT a time when many, if not most, biologists are con- 

 fessing that they find no helpful analogy between 

 the operations of not-living matter and the adaptive and 

 coordinating activities of the living organism, it is in- 

 teresting to find one who maintains that vital phenomena 

 are much simpler than they seem. It is maintained in 

 the book before us that we have invested with a veil of 

 mystery what are really " the natural consequences of 

 chemical, physical and mechanical phenomena." This 

 has been a frequently recurrent idea in the history of 

 biology : but the author has worked it out in a theoretical 

 system in which biomolecules and biomores, bioplasm 

 and biomonads play a part supposed to be comparable to 

 that of atoms and molecules and radicals in chemistry. 



The fundamental facts of life with which Dr. Giglio- 

 Tos begins his materialistic reconstruction of biology 

 are assimilation and reproduction. In assimilation, the 

 organism adds to its own organisation at the expense of 

 material different from itself; in reproduction, it gives 

 rise to other units which are actually or potentially like 

 itself. These processes of growth and multiplication 

 may seem simple in words, but whenever we pass to the 

 things themselves they impress us as marvellous, even in 

 simple creatures like amceba or diatom, monad or 

 microbe, coccidian or my.-comycete. And the impression 

 of marvellous complexity, in spite of apparent simplicity, 

 is heightened whenever the organisms show, as they 

 so often do, some evidence of " behaviour " (whether it be 

 chemotactic attraction and repulsion or adaptive and co- 

 ordinated movements in search of food). But by dwelling 

 on this " behaviour," which seemed to us of the very 

 essence of life, we have become blind^so this book sug- 

 gests — to the real simplicity of the assimilative and re- 

 productive processes, which are "truly and exclusively 

 chemical." To prove this last statement directly is not 

 at present possible, for we do not know the chemical 

 composition of living matter ; but what the author pro- 

 poses is the legitimate and practicable test — Are the inter- 

 pretative formulae of the chemist sufficient for a simpler 

 re-description of vital phenomena? His answer is an 

 emphatic affirmative. To be convinced, we are invited 

 to make a simple experiment, in regard to which a 

 chemist's opinion would be of much interest. We are 

 told to "feed "two molecules of acetic acid with perchloride 

 of phosphorus ; and the resulting chloride of acetyl with 

 zinc-ethyl ; we are asked to subject the resulting methyl- 

 ethyl-ketone to oxidation ; and the result is that from 

 two molecules of acetic acid we get four. 



" May we not say that the two molecules of acetic acid 

 have assimilated and reproduced ? . . . Reproduction 

 is the fission of a living molecule (' biomolecule'), which, 



NO. 1657, VOL. 64] 



after a series of assimilatory reactions, divides into other 

 molecules of the original constitution." 



We do not ourselves find any cogent evidence to 

 show that a living molecule or biomolecule exists, or that 

 it is needed as a theoretical postulate in biological inter- 

 pretation ; it seems to us highly probable that living 

 matter is a complex mixture (organisation or synthesis) 

 of organic substances whose virtue is in their inter- 

 relations ; we do not see in the acetic acid story more 

 than an analogy of very doubtful suggestiveness. But we 

 must let the author tell his own tale. He devotes his 

 second chapter to mapping out the possible developmental 

 cycles of the imaginary biomolecule. Through phases of 

 assimilation, followed by rearrangement of atoms, the 

 biomolecule matures and multiplies, and there are three 

 possible schemes : of (I.) autogenetic, (II.) homogenetic 

 and (III.) heterogenetic development : — 



(I.) a becomes b, then c .... d .... m, which divides 

 into a-va. 



(II.) a .... b' .... c' .... d' ... . m' = e' + t (and 

 e' may thereafter give rise to a' -I- a'). 



(III.) a" .... b" ... c" .... d" ... . Ill" = e" + i" 

 (of which /', called genetic, may regenerate a", while /", called 

 somatic, cannot). 



The third chapter, deahng with the physiology of the 

 biomolecule, discusses at some length the proposition 

 that " respiration is not a process of combustion but of 

 oxidation," and that the formation of COo is an indirect 

 result, comparable to what occurs when acetic acid acts 

 on isocyanate of ethyl. The author is under a misappre- 

 hension when he says that " respiration is generally 

 regarded to-day as a simple combustion .... an inter- 

 pretation accepted by almost all biologists." Although 

 we cannot explain how the oxygen, as Pfliiger said, helps 

 to wind up the vital clock, although we cannot as yet trace 

 the oxygen through its sojourn in the tissues, we have 

 left the false simplicity of the crude combustion theory 

 far behind. In the pages of the book devoted to this 

 subject, and in those dealing with the formation of starch 

 in vegetable cells, the author argues against positions 

 long since abandoned, and makes no new contribution to 

 the problems. ■ 



The fourth chapter mtroduces us to " the biomore," an 

 old acquaintance with a fresh alias, the visible Uving 

 particle. It is, of course, formed of biomolecules, prob- 

 ably different from one another and juxtaposed like the 

 inorganic molecules in double salts. The life of the 

 biomore is not dependent on its constitution ; it lives 

 because it is formed of molecules themselves alive. 

 Nevertheless, the accomplishment of vital functions is 

 facilitated by the juxtaposition of the biomolecules, and 

 by the increase in their instability which thus results. 

 The arrangement of the biomolecules in the biomore 

 depending on their chemical constitution, there is in the 

 biomore, during assimilation, a continual displacement of 

 biomolecules by reason of their chemical changes. 

 Physiologically considered, " the biomore is a veritable 

 mutual symbiosis of biomolecules." Had the author 

 developed the fruitful idea of " symbiosis," he might have 

 been led to the conception of " protoplasm " ( = bioplasm) 

 as an organisation of substances not in themselves 

 living, but in virtue of their interrelations giving rise to 

 the phenomena of life. 



P 



