The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-01-18

Can life be produced by chemical aC
 tion? Can man create living beings ou of dead matter? pr. Arthur D. Hough
 ton, late of professor of pathology a
 Hahnemann Medical College, apparent
 ly has accomplished this marvelou
 feat, says the Chicago Record-Herald.
 After seven years of labor, involving
 hundreds of sleepless nights and thou
 sands of experiments, he has learned
 the secret of creating cells resembling
 and acting like those shapeless micro
 scopic masses of living protoplasn
 known as amoebas.
 The doctors manufactured cell creepi x to and fro with a flowing motion.
 has the power of drawing food from tn N liquid in which it floats. It is able t'
 absorb the food within it's soft gelatin
 ous form, It perpetuates itself to tht
 second generation by the divison of itS
 body into four or five daughter cells
 It's life ranges from half an hour tc three weeks.
 S# All living things are composed o1 protoplasmic cells. Under proper con ' ditions single cells are capable of per forming the functions of sensation, nu- z triton, reproduction and automatic or
 
 spontaneous motion.
 The amoeba is a creature of a single
 cell. It Is one of the lowest and sim
 plest forms of life and usually exists in
 water. is bit of jelly-like proto-
 ,plasm. It has the power of extending
 and contracting it's gelatinous form, and
 1t moves about in the water with a mo- \ ton of flowing.
 % The amoeba has neither head, legs,
 eyes, ears, membranes nor nerves. It
 needs neither stomach nor lungs. Yet { It lis a living creature, It grasps it's
 food by projecting a part of its mushy
 body like finger or tentacle. It has no \ mouth, but it absorbs it's food into it's
 soft body the apertures in the sur-
 face closing up immediately after the
 food has passed in. The amoeba per
 petuate itself as a rule, by subdivison, a process which is continued generation
 after generation.
 Dr. Houghton claims to have produc-
 ed amoebalike cells from crystals. What
 kind of crystals, you ask. An, that is the doctors secret.
 Here is his explanations
 T found in the course of my eXperl- ence that by balancing crystal on each side of a dish and immersed in medium in which the crystals were chemically operative on each other but In which they were extremely slow or
 Solution, I could produce point at which specialization would not take place at all, but instead a colloid (jelly- 1ike) mass would be formed that would exhibit amoebalike activity. This led me to consideration of what might be done on a higher plane of chemical activity,
 ~I succeeded eventually, by using an organic substance. in producing an ac- tive protoplasmic mass containing dis tinct nucleus-like centers, which eX- hibited amoeboid movement. It assiml- lated nutriment, it gave the reactions to aniline dyes that organic cells do it had a pfotoplasmic reticulum (net work), it showed selective affinity, and 1t even made feeble attempts at perpet- auation of its species. It split into four or five cells, which exhibited the same as the mother cell. After a period of activity varying i'll different | experiments from half an hour to three weeks, the cells lost heir powers and | became inert masses.
 My cells fulfill all the conditions of ! living cells, such as amoebas, except | as to the power of perpetuating their | kind Indefinitely. I think we shall soon discover the necessary element to make | a complete and perfect living organism. Biology has made great advances in re- cent years Old theories are being dis proved and new truths revealed. It was long held that among creatures well up in athe scale of animal life it was neces- sary to have union of two sexes in or der to secure reproduction of the spe- cies Recent experiments that have at- tracted wide attention demonstrates that the male is not always necessary. This important discovery was made by a distinguished Chicago scientist, Pro- lessor Loeb, of the University of Chi cago. He has been experimenting with various forms of marine life at the Gov ernment marine station at Woods Holl, Mass. He has discovered that certain marine creatures will reproduce if the female is simply immersed in solutions containing magnesium or sodium chlorides.
 "Professor Loeb's discovery seems to point the way for the search for the male elemnt which appears to be lack Ing for my cells. I am now trying to lind solution which will impregnate the cells produced from the chemicals, and the nthe problem of creating life will be solved. I am seek ng solution containing ions which will not interfere with enzymic action lor be toxic to my cells, while having a correct of isotonic equivalent which will | sause reproduction and perpetuation of species" Although pr. Houghton's cells appar- : ,ntly. live for two generations, it will be : loted he does not claim to have fully l olyed the problem of creating life. He | insists that to fulfill the conditions 8 the cell should be able to | ,erpetuate itself ceaselessly under fa- C rorabe conditions. If his search is s rowned with success he does not ex- I ,ect 1t to have any great practical bearing on the human race, except in q modifying the theory of the origin of a fife. 'About the most important result will q ,e to knock the pins out from under I UT theory of creation by divine be- d ng will no longer be tenable. The cell t reated by chemical action will ba as , r imple as the amoeba. and it will take nillions of years of education for it to A cquire a nervous system. VI The solution in which the doctor in- | h