The Pensacola journal. (Pensacola, Fla.) 1898-1985, 1919-02-15
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY is, 1919.



For years scientists with heads shaped like
parsnips have been mixing chemicals with long
names, hoping to produce creature with life in
it. Announcements by Professor McCook, that he
had discovered a fishworm with spinal column,
were seized on in the scientific world as the long
sought missing link between dead matter and liv-
ing things.
But out of the great surgical hospitals created
By the war comes discovery which, II not re-
vealng the secret of lfe at least raises the ques-
ton whether may not some day discover
how to prolong human life even to the satisfac-
tion of the historic Ponce de Leon who sought
the fountain of youth.
DR.. Alexis Carrel five years ago announced
that he could take tissue (meat) from chicken
and keep it alive indefinitely. Not only keep it
alive, but make it grow.
Carrel took a piece of the heart OF chicken,
kept it in an incubator at the heat usual to a
chickens body, fed it with chicken blood The
piece of heart shortly began beating like whole
heart: for I04 days it kept up its beating and
growing. Dog bones were kept alive by the same
method.
Two years later Dr. Robert A. Lambert of New
York declared that ''unmodified human plasma Is
not satisfactory culture medium for human It's
sues owing to the susceptibility of human fibrin
IL
This souned as if DR.. Lambert had run across
q message in German code, but scientists ex-
planned that he announcing the discovery
that human tissue can be kept alive indefinitely
blood, flesh and pieces of skin.
Recent research in war hospitals backs Lam
berts claims.
Now if scientists can really take pieces of the
human body and keep 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 recently found some corn that
had been in the family attic 70 years. He planted
it and it grew and yielded crop.
A Few years ago wheat which had been locked
in an Egyptian tomb for 5000 years was taken
out, planted-and grew.
Thai wheat had been motionless for 30 GEN.
turtles but the life germ in each lived.
If body could lie motionless, it too might live
for centuries. Tt is movements that bring
on DEATH Gradually the hard-worked and abused
machine wears out.
The scientists have what they call the
Energy Theory of Life-that all living things
(men, animals, plants, trees) receive energy from
the sun; that in moving and dying they release
the energy, which Immediately returns to its
source, the sum-
Is there some way. on system like insulating
electric wires that we can keep our energy in
our bodies so as to double the average length of
human life?
If the war scientists remove hand from
our body and keep it alive and growing indefi-
nitely, why may they not soon discover how to
keep that hand alive and growing when attached
to the body-as well as impart life to the entire
body for centuries?
Are we on the verge of discovering the great
secret of life and how to prolong it? Is the foun-
tain of youth about to reveal itself? Will the
scientists of the year 1850 add half-century to
our lives by giving hypodermic injectin or vac
cinating with strange energy germs?