EXPERIMENTS WITH RADIUM 99 



remembered that the salts themselves are antiseptics : 

 but as the artificial production of bodies apparently 

 alive has been repeatedly asserted, as it has bpen 

 again and again disputed and denied ; the produc- 

 tion of such bodies by radium and other salts is not 

 more remarkable than their production by other 

 means, unless it can be shown that when extreme 

 precautions are taken it is by this method, and this 

 method alone, that such bodies are, notwithstanding 

 their prevention, still produced. If the tubes were 

 opened to insert the salt after sterilisation, the ex- 

 periment is inconclusive, because the growths may 

 emanate from other parts of the surface of the 

 gelatin, when the parts on which the salt fell cannot 

 be identified. 



We do not claim to have produced spontaneous 

 generation, for by this is meant the development 

 of what is living from that which was supposed 

 not to be. No doubt inorganic substance may 

 contain embedded in it some germ or germs till 

 hitherto unknown and of a nature quite distinct 

 from any we have yet had reason to regard as 

 living ; the substances employed may by their very 

 nature, as it is here suggested, have the principle 

 of vital process in an elementary form.^ It is so 

 with the dynamically unstable substances which of 

 their own account manifest radio-activity. These 

 dynamically unstable bodies disintegrate and decay 

 in their manifestations of that activity : but although 



1 " The Eadio-activity of Matter," Monthly Beview, loc. cit. 



H 2 



