Henry Charlton Bastian. 



xxm 



This work is a monument of patient and honest endeavour to support a lost 

 cause. He felt deeply the rejection of his papers to the Royal Society. One 

 paper he sent January 16, 1902, "Note on the Transformation in the course 

 of three or four days of the Entire Contents of the Egg of Hydatina Senta 

 into a Large Ciliated Infusorium belonging to the Genus Otostoma," having 

 been rejected, his comment was : " Were the announcements in this paper 

 new or were they true ? That they were new, there could be no doubt — their 

 truth could only be gainsaid by investigation of the specimens." 



In November, 1912, Bastian read a paper before the Pathological Section of 

 the Royal Society of Medicine, and claimed that elementary organisms will 

 appear in sterilised fluids ; these elementary organisms are found to be 

 associated with well-developed Torulae or with bacteria, which can be shown 

 in the course of a few days to be living by the growth and multiplication 

 which they undergo under the conditions indicated on p. 59 of the ' Origin of 

 Life.' Precisely similar associations with growing Torulae were seen and 

 described in ' The Beginnings of Life,' pp. 281-283. He claims that the crucial 

 point of discussion, namely, the introduction of germs by experimental error, 

 or of desiccated germs not having been sterilised by heating, lias been put out 

 of court. This is the essential crux of the whole question. Is there a fallacy 

 in the technique ? The possible explanation is that there was a partial 

 vacuum in his tubes, and that when he opened them air containing such 

 germs as Toruhe and other moulds (which are very common) entered and 

 vitiated the experiment. So far no scientist of repute has confirmed his 

 experiments, but he would have asked, Have they been tested ? It might 

 happen that, without confirming Bastian's doctrine of heterogenesis, new facts 

 might be discovered, as was the case when it was found that desiccated germs 

 resisted boiling. 



Notwithstanding the fact that 30 years ago the question of " spontaneous 

 generation" was dead to the scientific world, one cannot but admire the 

 courage and honesty of conviction with which Dr. Bastian with such tenacity 

 of purpose and long patient research endeavoured to re-establish his position. 

 But the technique of bacteriologists had made enormous advances in those 

 30 years and, however careful a worker is, without laboratory experience and 

 training, unforeseen errors are likely to occur. 



As to the origin of living matter most scientists will agree that there is a 

 difficulty in refuting the following statements by Bastian : — 



" When it is said, therefore, that a belief in spontaneous generation would 

 tend to contradict the experience of all mankind, my reply is : That archi- 

 biosis may be occurring all around us, and that from its very nature it must 

 be a process lying altogether outside human experience and never likely to 

 come within the actual ken of men." 



" To ask a person to believe that all forms of life on this planet have 

 during countless ages evolved from the primordial living matter which first 

 appeared thereon, and at the same time to ask him to believe that the causes 

 of this evolution through all these ages have been inoperative upon myriads 



