THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 



in archigony was made in 1875 by the distinguished 

 physiologist, Edward Pfliiger, in his essay on Physio- 

 logical Combustion in the Living Organism. He starts 

 from the fact that the plasm (or protoplasm) is the 

 material basis of all vital phenomena, and that this 

 living matter owes its properties to the chemical prop- 

 erties of the albumin (whether we regard this as a 

 chemical unity, protein or protalbumin, or as a mixture 

 of different compounds). However, Pfiiiger sharply 

 distinguishes between the living albumin of the plasm 

 out of which all organisms are built, and the dead 

 albumin, such as we find it, for instance, in the glairy 

 albumin of the hen's egg. Only the living albumin 

 (plasm) decomposes of itself in a slight degree, and to 

 a greater extent under the influence of external exci- 

 tation; the dead albumin will remain intact for a long 

 time under favorable conditions. The cause of the 

 extraordinary instability of the living albumin is its 

 intramolecular oxygen — that is to say, the oxygen that 

 is taken into the interior of the plasma-molecules in 

 breathing, and effects there a disassociation, surround- 

 ing the atoms and breaking up the new-formed groups. 

 The real cause of this rapid decomposability of the 

 plasm, and of the accompanying formation of carbonic 

 acid, is found in the cyanogen, a remarkable body com- 

 posed of an atom of carbon and an atom of nitrogen, 

 which, in conjunction with potassium, forms the well- 

 known and very virulent poison, cyanide of potassium. 

 The non-nitrogenous decomposition-products of the dead 

 and the living albumin agree in the main, but their 

 nitrogenous products are totally different. Uric acid, 

 creotin, guanine, and the other decomposition products 

 of plasm contain the cyanogen-radical, and the most 

 important of all, urea, can be artificially produced from 

 cyanic compounds, as Wohler showed in 1828. From 

 this we may infer that the living albumin always con- 



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