Abstract
PROF. LEDUC is not one of those who exaggerates the apartness of life. He thinks that the differences between an animate and an inanimate system are differences of degree, not of kind. It is in vain, he says, that one seeks for any exclusive characteristic of living things; it cannot be found in development, or nutrition, or irritability, or growth, or organisation, or reproduction. One discovers in living creatures only those physical forces which operate in the not-living world; biology, indeed, is part of the physico-chemistry of fluids. These conclusions are based partly on general reasoning, which appears to us fallacious, and partly on an interesting series of experiments, of which some illustrations may be given. A solution of 5 to 6 per cent, pure gelatine is spread on a slide; on this at regular intervals of 5 to 6 mm. one places by means of a pipette drops of ferrocyanide of potassium; these diffuse and meet and dry, giving a result like a tissue. The “artificial cells” pass through three stages of organisation, equilibration, and decline-ending, of course, in “death.”
Théorie Physico-chimique de la Vie et Générations Spontanées.
By Prof. Stéphane Leduc. Pp. 202. (Paris: A. Poinat, 1910.) Price 5 francs.
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Théorie Physico-chimique de la Vie et Générations Spontanées . Nature 86, 410 (1911). https://doi.org/10.1038/086410a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/086410a0