Wausau pilot. [volume] (Wausau, Wis.) 1896-1940, 1905-10-31
ARTIFICIAL CREATION.
CURIOUS CLAIMS OF AN INDIANA
MAN, DR.. LITTLEFlELD.

East Has Had Only imperfect lnti- |
mations-Idea Advanced That Ma
ture Produced Life From Inanimate
Materials.
In Harper's Weekly DR.. Charles w. |
Littlefeld, of Anderson, Ind, describ- |
ed at much length some strange ex-
periments about which the East has |
had only imperfect intimations before |
The article just printed enables a per-
son to estimate more accurately than |
hitherto the soundness or unsound |
ness of Dr. Littlefield's claims. though |
there has always been good reason |
for disputing them.
DR.. Littlefeld is one of those men
who believe in spontaneous genera |
ton That is, he thinks that ma
ture produced life from inanimate ma
terials, and he asserts that in his
cess. Other men, better qualified for
the work than he, have tried to do the |
same thing, but thus far without sue
cess Professor Jacques Loeb, of Cal |
ifornia, for instance, has made some |
observations that were interpreted by
his friends Thought not by him) as
step toward artificial creation. Again,
very recently in Cambridge, England |
a brilliant young Irishman named |
Burke created a sensation by telling |
what he had done with radium. I'm |
der its influence, he said, some bodies |
had been produced which at first he
thought might be bacteria or other low
forms of life, but he has not convinced |
any one else whose opinion is worth |
needing, and he is now less confident |
himself than he was a month or two
ago.
Two or three centuries ago the sus
picion was entertained that certain
organisms were often produced spon- |
taneously. An Italian naturalist, |
Radi, showed that if proper means
were taken TO exclude the presence of |
previously existing forms of life, ami |
NAL and vegetable, nothing new could |
be developed. Maggots would not APP |
pear in decaying meat If it was so |
shielded that flies could not lay eggs |
in it. So, too, Redi showed that If wa
ter were thoroughly boiled, to kill the
various creatures already there, and if |
the admission of others was prevent |
ed, no new organisms (even of the |
most microscopic size) would be
found He thus established the prin- |
ciple which has been widely, if not |
universally, adopted ever since, that |
there can be no life without previous
life; no offspring without parents.
A careful perusal of the story told
by DR.. Littlefeld shows that he has
neglected one precaution taken by
Redi, and thus makes it necessary to
discredit his conclusions. The Ander-
son man takes nearly a dozen different !
minerals which are commonly found |
in plants and animals, and grinds, !
mixes and dissolves them in water. |
Then he puts small quantity of the
compound in shallow dishes, which he
sets in the sun or where they can
be kept at a temperature of rs or 80 |
degrees Fahrenheit AS the water
dries out he supplies fresh install !
ments" Now, he says that after
about twenty-eight days the minerals
begin to crystalline in forms that re-
semble vegetation. He dries them,
looks at them with a microscope and
sees some strange shapes, which he
thinks correspond to the lower classes
of the animal creation. He judges
Nv O,,+x ri
He has not put them to any test that
would show that they really are living
creatures. If they were they would
multiply, and he does not report any
experiments which demonstrate such
a possibility. There is strong prob
ability, therefore, that the shapes as
sumed by his drying and crystalliz-
ing minerals no more represent real
animals than do queer outlines in the
clouds or pictures that ones fancy de-
tects in fire.
Still, if there were any bacteria or
other microscopic organisms on his
plates, it would be easy to guess
where they came from. Like Redi,
DR.. Littlefeld boiIs the water which
he uses, but he neglects another pre-
caution that the Italian invariably
adopted. Redi always sealed his
TASKS so that no air could get at his
fluid. He did not realize what mod
ern bacterologists well know, that the
atmosphere always carries countless
bacteria, some baleful some benef-
cial, but all Of them invisible Though
he did not fully appreciate the value
of the means he took to exclude these
organisms, anybody can now see their
use, and see how careless DR.. Little
field has been in failing to adopt it.
Probably one reason why he did not
is that he wanted to facilitate evapora-
tion by leaving his dishes uncovered,
but whatever his motive, the neglect
utterly destroys the value of his eX-
periments. If he would try them
again, and absolutely exclude the pos
sibilitv of invasion from the air, he
would doubtless get the same result
that Redi did-nothing at all! DR.. Lit
tlefield has made childish exhibition
OF ignorance by the methods he has
adopted.-New York Tribune.