Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1929-04-19
DEATH IS ASl'R|BED
TO ELECTRIC Loss
Lack Of Contamination in
Minute Quantities Seen as
Cause of Fatalities.
BY HOWARD w. BLAKESLEE,
Associated Press Science Editor.

PHILADELPHIA, April 1.-Two re-
cent discoveries, one that death may be
due to loss OF minutes quantities Of elec-
tricity from the body, and the other
that cancer cells grow no more rapidly
than normal cells. were explained to
the American Philosophical Society
here today.
The electrical experiments were re-
ported by DR.. George w. Grille, director
Of the Cleveland Clinic and the Cleve-
land Clinic Hospital. The cancer find-
ings were from DR.. Alexis Carrel Of the
Rockefeller Institute, New York.
DR.. Grille described the vital force
which is life as ian electric strain or
potential" Certain forms of life he was
able to measure In terms of voltage.
He took fruit Juice, and by restoring Its
lost potential was able to cause In 1t
some Of the manifestations of the life
of the original fruit.
Thirty-five years ago, DR.. Grille said
he first began to search for the essen
tial feature In living organisms which
is lost upon death.
Researches Summarized.
1T propose now to offer new expert
mental evidence which Identifies form
of energy that Is lost In death. These
researches may be summarized as fol-
lows:
an animals, plants and fruits a po-
tential exists during life and disappears
at DEATH"
In a living apple DR.. Grille found a
potentiaiity of so millivolts and that
the fruit had "a steady respiration,
consuming from three to four cubic
centimeters Of oxygen every hour. :
The apple responded in potential and
temperature changes and exclusion OF
oxygen lust as they had acted on the
rabbit and the dog"
Experimenting with apple juice alone
he found that potential could be in
duced, and while It existed there was
respiration like that of the living apple
Life" he said, may be defined as a
potential which Is maintained and Is
varied adaptively according to environ
mental conditions; that potential being
maintained by chemical activity
mainly by oxidation.
I'm the higher, multicellular orga-
nisms life Is an adaptive difference In
potential between the brain and the
other organs and tissues, especially the
liver"
Gives Data on Cancer.
On cancer DR.. Carrel said:
with the help of new techniques de-
veloped during the past years in my
laboratories 1t has become possible to
define tissue cells not only by Their
shape and structure, as was done pre-
vicusly, but also by their functions"
Thus, he explained, cells are iden-
tilted by their mode Of locomotion, their
architecture, rate of growth, residual
energy, secretions, conditions OF medium
in which they live and substances they
require for nutrition.
These tcchniques," he said. "have
been applied lately in New York and
also in Europe to the study of cancer
lignant cells has almost completely col
lapsed. Thus these cells are not an
archical. They grow no more rapidly
than normal cells: they have no more
growth energy, and they are not neces-
sarily diseased. They do not possess
any specific morphological character
istics, but they differ from the normal
by certain properties.
"A striking fact is that they obtain
the nitrogen necessary for multiplied
ton from proteins or from protein split
products, which normal cells Of the
same type are unable to utilize. Such Q
property explains their unlimited pro-
liberation within the body, because the
substances compelling their multiplied
ton are located within their reach in
the tissues"