Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1905-08-13

THE experiments in which have been engaged
have aroused much public interest and
have caused SO many suggestions criticisms
guarded and unguarded whether friendly or other
wise, that | now, however reluctantly, COM
PEELED to speak Primarily, l want to point out
the great danger there is of preliminary scientific
note in scientific journal being misunderstood to
some extent | fear it has been, and perhaps
also misconstrued by the enthusiastic mind OF the
public.
The question as to whether the microscopic forms
which | have obtained with sterilzed bouillon-
the ordinary culture mediun-and radium
not living things depends altogether upon what
conception of life is, and upon how broad
how narrow is the definition we are willing to accept
of the phenoma of vital processes. When these
atoms which l have obtained are examined through
a microscope distinct indication of growth and
segregation is seen. They reach certain size and
then divide. That would indicate clearly that
they not crystals They possibly primitive
form of life. Everything, or nearly so, is radio
active-the earth is, and in suitable medium life
may have originated on the earth in such a
The professed biologist, it seems Il do not
profess to be one, since physics is the subject to
which have been particularly devoted) should have
the right to speak and to decide for the question
to what is to be understood by living and not
living matter; what is this unit atom of life;
whether 1t is man, an acorn, microscopic cell
the atom of radium, something else that
eight years ago the chemist ruled supreme To
him the atom the sacred structure. 1t
anathema to all who would divide it. But the
physicist viewed it from different standpoint. In
stead of looking down it the smallest of things,
he looked up to it great compared with the
smallest that he knew, and promised for it many
possibilities In this struggle he has been victorious
and the conquered territory, so to speak, the
borderland between the two sciences, has led to
form closer ties of friendship and clearer under
standing between chemists and physicists alike.
Why should it not be SO with the biologist?
May it not be that mutual understanding yet
become allies in the same field; that the differences
that apparently exist should be found to be due
merely to some misrepresentation irrelevancy?
Pasteur physicist and chemist but he followed
lis studies where they led him with open mind.
Tyndall also a physicist. In my own small
way, too perhaps may be permitted to pursue my
experiments with freedom WheresOever they may
lead There are questions in biology of the deepest
interest to the physicist. What | have obtained
seemed in the first instance to have been either mi
CrObes crystals, neither of these, but some
thing in the border-line between them and to my
mind they appear now to approximate more closely
to bacteria than to crystals ordinarily under
stood though strictly speaking they appear to differ
largely from both but make this statement with all
due reserve. Until more powerful instruments,
for which | am waiting at present, at hand |
should prefer to withhold further opinions on this
subject.
The third possibility is present he most prob