The Lakeland evening telegram. (Lakeland, Fla.) 1911-1922, 1919-03-12
THE SECRET OF LIFE
(Richmond Item

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For years scientists with heads
shaped like parsnips have been mix
ing chemicals with long names, hop
ing to produce creature with life IN
it. Announcements by Professor Nc
Cook, that he had discovered a fish
worm with a spinal column, were
seized on in the scientific world as
the long-sought link between dead
matter and living things.
But out of the great surgical hospit-
ais created by the war comes a dis
covery which, il not revealing the Sc
cret of life, at least raises the ques-
ton whether man may not some day
discover how to prolong human life
even to the satisfaction of the pre-
historic Ponce de Leon, who sought
the fountain Of youth,
Dr. Alexis Carrel five years ago an
nounced that he could take tissue
(meat) from a chicken and keep It
alive indefinitely. Not only keep II
alive, but made it grow.
Carrel took a piece of the heart of
| a chicken, kept it in an incubator at
the heat usual to a chickens body,
fed 1t with chicken blood. The piece
of heart shortly began beating like
whole heart; for 104 days it kept up
it's beating and growing. Dog bones
were kept alive by the same method.
Two years later DR.. Robert A. Lam
bert of New York, declared that "un-
modified human plasma is not sat
isfactory culture medium for human
tissues owing to the susceptibility of
human fibrin to digestion by tissue
ferments," etc., etc.
This sounded as II DR.. Lambert had
run across a message in German
code, but scientists explained that he
was announcing the discovery that
human tissue can be kept alive in
definitely blood, flesh, pieces of skin
Recent research in war hospitals
backs Lambert's claims.
Now, if scientists can really take
pieces of the human body and keel
them alive forever, why could they
not do the same thing to the body it
self?
Death is the absence of life.
But thing does not have to move
to be alive, A farmer out west re
Gently found some corn that had beer
in the family attic 70 years. HI
planted it and it grew and yielded
crop.
A few years ago wheat which hat
been locked in an Egyptian tomb To-
5000 years was taken out, planted
and grew.
That wheat had been motionles
for 80 centuries, but the life germ IL
it lived on.
II the body could lie motionless
too, might live for centuries. It 4
our movements that bring on death
Gradually the hard-worked ant
abused machine wears out.
The scientists now have what the,
call the Energy Theory of Life-tha
all living things (men, animals
plants, trees) receive energy from tn,
sun; that in moving and dying the.
release the energy, which immediate
ly returns to its source, the sun.
Is there some way, on system Xix
insulating electric wires, that We ca
keep our energy in our bodies so a
to double the average length of hu
man life?
If the war scientists can remove
hand from our body and keep it aliv
and growing indefinitely, why ma
they not soon discover how to kee
that hand alive and growing whe
attached to the body-as we'll as in
part life to the entire human body 70
centuries?
Are we on the verge Of discoverin
the secret of life and how to prolon
it? Is the fountain of youth abou
to reveal itself? viii the scientist
of the year 1850 add a half centur
to our lives by giving a hypodermi
| injection or vaccinating with strang
energy serums!