Evening star., 1895-06-01
LIFE AND DEATH.
What Scientists Have Discovered in
the Study of Protoplasm.

From the London Saturday Review.
In the descending scale of animal life
the relations between the organs are less
end less intimate and the misleading sud-
der ness of the arrest of the machinery
faces away. The heart of a turtle from
which tie brain has been removed will con-
tinue to beat for days. A worm or a star
fish may be cut to pieces and each piece
remains alive, sometimes even reproducing
the whole. Who shall name the point of
death of an oyster or of a sea anemone?
No stcppage of a single organ causes sud
den and conspicuous change in the whole.
When protoplasmic death of a part occurs,
either the part is Sloughad away and re-
placed or the ripples of destructive change
spread slowly from cell to cell, each unaf-
fected part remaining active to the last.
In the simplest animals of ALL organisms
that consist each of a single cell, death
may be seen at it's lowest terms. There is
no composite multiceilular body no bodily
mechanism to break down, no possibility
OF the failure of one set of cells gradually
creeping upon others. Each organism is
alive or dead as Its protoplasm is alive or
dead.
Here, in their simplest forms. are life and
death: and here. asking if death be in
herent In living matter, we find surprising
answer. Violence of heat and cold. me-
cFanical forces, and the assaults of chem
ioal af1inities may destroy these single par
ticles of life: but it is not overthrown by
Tuuo dcciuent, ana II provided with food
and drink, their protoplasm lives forever
Each particle feeds until, outyrowing a
convenient size, it cleaves asunder and one
dfe becomes two lives. so far as reason
and observation can inform us the living
particles in the ponds and seas of today
have descended in a direct continuity of
living material from the first dawn OF life
No other solution is open, save the possibil-
ity of spontaneous generation of living
matter 50 continual and so common that
1t could have eluded the search of science
This Is that Immortality of the protozoa"
limited at by Lancaster. in England, blaaon-
ed into fame by Weismann.
Whether or no the protoplasm of the tis-
sues of higher organism be potentially i'm
mortal can only be q matter of Inference
The productive cells indeed, form living
chain. binding the animals and plants Of the
present with the animals and plants of the
remotest past. This reproductive proto-
plasm IS immortal In precisely the same
sense as the protoplasm of single cells is
immortal, and there seems no rea son to he
Neve with Weismann that the protoplasra
OF the other tissues has acquired mortality
and is different In kind. 1t dies, but only
because 1t Is part of a complex structure
The machinery Of the body is not regulat
ed to last forever; on the Other hand, it is
to the advantage of the race that IL should
break down when reproduction has been
accomplished, and it's breakdown results
In the ruin OF its component parts There
Is no reason to suppose that the protopla SIN
itself grows old. A slip cut from tree
many centuries old may be grated on a
young tree and so enter on a new lea ase of
life Were the process to be continued a
continuity of protoplasmic life might be
maintained. So far as we can tell, death is
not inherent in living matter ProtopIasm
may live forever. as fame shielded from
the wind and fed from an endless Store
would burn forever.