108 NATURE 
[JUNE 1, 1899 
back as far as these very early stages of life on our 
planet to apply those lines of Tennyson :— 
“ So Careful of the type she seems, 
So careless of the single life.” 
We have arrived, then, at a condition in which the 
same material may be worked up over and over again; in 
this way ultimately higher forms might be produced. 
Now, if to this dissolution, as a means of giving us new 
material, we add reproduction, then we can go a stage 
very much further. If we take bi-partition, which was the 
first method of multiplication, as we know both in the 
vegetable and animal world, we have a multiplication of 
forms by halving instead of the inorganic multiplication 
of forms by doubling, then we can have a very much 
increased rate of advance. 
These then, roughly, are the conclusions as to an 
organic evolution which are suggested by the stellar 
evidence as to inorganic evolution, and the collocation 
of the simplest forms noted in the hottest stars. 
Let us turn finally to the facts. Biologists, as I have 
said before, are very much more happy than astronomers 
and chemists, because they can see their units. A 
chemist professes to believe in nothing which he does 
not get in a bottle, although I have never yet seen the 
chemist who was ever happy enough to bottle an atom 
or a molecule as such; but the superstition still remains 
with them, and they profess to believe in nothing that 
they cannot see. Now, the organic cell is the unit of the 
biologist, which is itself a congeries of subordinate 
entities, as a molecule is made up of its elementary 
atoms, manifesting the properties common to living 
matter in all its forms. 
The characteristic general feature of the vegetable 
activity of the plant forms is their feeding upon gases and 
liquids, including sea-water. The progress of research 
greatly strengthens the view that there was a common 
life plasm, out of which both the vegetable and the 
animal kingdoms have developed. Be that as it may, 
you see the vegetable grows upon these chemical forms 
to which I have referred, and the animal feeds either 
upon the plant or upon other animals which have in 
their turn fed upon plants ; so that there we get the real 
chemical structure of the protoplasm, of the real life unit, 
in our organic evolution, 
The last question, then, that I have to touch upon is 
this. Is there any chemical relation between the chem- 
ical composition of the organic cell and the reversing 
layers of the hottest stars—the reversing layer being that 
part of a star’s anatomy by which we define the different 
genera? 
When we come to consider the chemical composition 
of this cell we find it consists of one or more forms of a 
complex compound of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, 
with water, called protein; and protoplasm, of which 
you have all heard, the common basis of vegetable and 
animal life, is thus composed. This substance is liable 
to waste and disintegration by oxidation, and there may 
be a concomitant reintegration of it by the assimilation 
of new matter. 
The marvellous molecular complexity of the so-called 
simple cell may be gathered from the following formule 
for haemoglobin : 
Man... C600 H 960 
Horse ... C 712 
Nes4y Hemeas 3) .Olr79 
Hiro N2tq Fer S2 © 245.1 
Various different percentage compositions have been 
given of this protoplasm, but I really need not refer you 
to them. It 1s more important to consider the other 
chemical substances which go to form it, for there are 
others beside which it is of interest to study from our 
stellar point of view. I quote from Mr. Sheridan Lea.? 
i ee “ Verworn,” p- 104 
“The Chemical Bas of the Animal Body,” p. 5. 
NO. 1544, VOL. 60] 
“Proteids ordinarily leave on ignition a variable 
quantity of ash. In the case of egg-albumin the prin- 
cipal constituents of the ash are CHLORIDES of SODIUM 
and potassium, the latter exceeding the former in amount. 
The remainder consists of SODIUM and potassium, in 
combination with phosphoric, sulphuric and CARBONIC 
acids, and very small quantities of CALCIUM, MAG- 
NESIUM and iron, in union with the same acids. There 
may be also a trace of SILICA.” 
My point is that the more one inquires into the 
chemistry of these things the more we come back to 
our stellar point of view and to the fact that, taking the 
simplicity of chemical form as determined by the appear- 
ance of these different chemical substances in the hottest 
stars as opposed to the cooler ones, and in relation to 
the “series” of spectra which they produce, we come to 
the conclusion that the first organic life was an inter- 
action somehow or other between the undoubted earliest 
chemical forms. Not only have we hydrogen, oxygen 
and nitrogen among the gases common to the organic 
cell and the hottest stars, but those substances in addition 
which I have indicated by capitals. 
Surely we have here, I think, thanks to some of the 
recent advances made by spectrum analysis, a quite new 
bond between man and the stars. 
We shall consider in the next lecture the simplicity of 
chemical forms as evidenced, not by atomic weight, but 
by the study of spectrum-series, to which I have already 
made two or three references. 
THE BERLIN TUBERCULOSIS CONGRESS 
(1899). 
= Congress, which has just brought its niotecames 
to a close, was not, as has been frequently stated in 
the medical and lay press, an International Congress ; it 
was a German Congress to which foreign delegates and 
comimunications were invited. The mass of communi- 
cations were made in German, this being the official 
language of the Congress; a few, some half-dozen, in 
English and French. The necessity, or at any rate ad- 
visability, of discoursing in German, may account for the 
very meagre manner in which English medicine was re- 
presented either privately or officially. It seemed some- 
what anomalous that the staff of only one London con 
sumption hospital (the North London) was represented 
at the Congress. Further, the English doctors practising 
at foreign health resorts, who probably have unrivalled 
opportunities for observing the different phases of con- 
sumption, and the influence of treatment upon them 
amongst better class patients, were for the most part 
conspicuous by their absence. This nonchalance is to 
be regretted, especially as the hygienic treatment of 
phthisis, a relatively, at any rate in its systematic form, 
new development; occupied some 50 per cent. of the 
whole time of the Congress. 
The enormous amount of material at the disposal of 
the Committee was classified in two ways. All papers 
were in the first instance denominated as lectures (“ Re- 
ferate ”), or discussion communications. For the former 
twenty minutes was allowed, for the latter ten. The 
subject-matter was divided into five Sections. I. Extent 
and Spread of Tuberculosis. II. Aetiology. III. Pro- 
phylaxis. IV. Treatment. V. Sanatorium Treatment. 
Section I.—Dr. Bollingen (Munich) read a paper upon 
tuberculosis amongst domestic animals, and its relation- 
ship to tubercular disease in man. Amongst many 1m- 
portant points, the lecturer emphasised the importance of 
milk as a source of tubercular infection to men, directly 
and indirectly. Indirectly in the sense that tuberculosis 
is very common amongst pigs, who get infected in con- 
siderable numbers from being fed with the milk of tuber- 
culous cows. Dr. Krieger (Strassburg) discussed the re- 
