280 



tion in the other ; both, with exceptions, maintain themselves 

 constantly at a higher temperature than their surroundings. 

 These analogies have in two or three instances proven danger- 

 ously attractive. 



A consideration of radioactivity led Dubois,''^ in 1904, to the 

 view that the distinction between "matter of life" and "living 

 matter" is superficial. He proposed the term bioproteon^ 

 meaning the particular state of the " proteon " in living beings, 

 and suggested the desirability of determining the radioactivity 

 proper of the bioproteon. In a subsequent paper ^^ he says: 

 "The unique principle of everything, of both force and matter, 

 I have called ' proteon,' and when it pertains to a living being, 

 'bioproteon'." Proteon and bioproteon are only two different 

 states of the same thing. When the bioproteon is dead it has 

 only ceased to be radioactive and becomes simply proteon. He 

 claimed also to have discovered the emission, from the lamelli- 

 branch mollusc, PJialadea dactyle, of rays that could penetrate 

 paper and opaque substances and darken a sensitive plate. 



Early in the year 1905 appeared his paper '^ on "Za creation de 

 Vetre vivant et les lois naturelles'' in which he announced the for- 

 mation of living organisms in bouillon gelatine by placing on it 

 crystals of the bromide of both barium and radium. Later in the 

 same year"" he claimed to have secured a kind of spontaneous gen- 

 eration by radium. By the contact of certain crystalloids with or- 

 ganic colloids, there are obtained, he says, granulations, or vacuo- 

 lides, possessing the optical and and morphological characters of 

 simple life, more rudimentary than bioproteon, or living matter. 

 These bodies arise, grow, divide, grow old, and die, returning to 

 the crystalline state like all living things, and Dubois applied to 

 them the generic term eobc (dawn of life). Eobes are held to 

 form the transition between the organic and the inorganic world. 

 In his essay ^^ on ''La radioactivitc et la vie,'' he elaborates the 

 hypothesis that the energy irradiated by living beings has two dis- 

 tinct origins — one from the environment, and one ancestral or 

 hereditary. By their " ancestral energy" living beings are simi- 

 lar to radioactive bodies. They both give off heat rays, light, 

 chemical rays, electricity, and possess molecular motion, and 

 atomic and other movements. 



