THE MECHANISM OF LIFE

Osmotic Productions. [Frontispiece

THE

MECHANISM OF LIFE

BY

Dr. Stéphane LEDUC

PROFESSEUR À L'ÉCOLE DE MÉDECINE DE NANTES

TRANSLATED BY

W. DEANE BUTCHER

FORMERLY PRESIDENT OF THE RÖNTGEN SOCIETY, AND OF THE
ELECTRO-THERAPEUTICAL SECTION OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF MEDICINE

NEW YORK

R E B M A N C O M P A N Y

Herald Square Building
141-145, West 36th Street

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE

Professor Leduc's Théorie Physico-chimique de la Vie et Générations Spontanées has excited a good deal of attention, and not a little opposition, on the Continent. As recently as 1907 the Académie des Sciences excluded from its Comptes Rendus the report of these experimental researches on diffusion and osmosis, because it touched too closely on the burning question of spontaneous generation.

As the author points out, Lamarck's early evolutionary hypothesis was killed by opposition and neglect, and had to be reborn in England before it obtained universal acceptance as the Darwinian Theory. Not unnaturally, therefore, he turns for an appreciation of his work to the free air and wide horizon of the English-speaking countries.

He has entitled his book "The Mechanism of Life," since however little we may know of the origin of life, we may yet hope to get a glimpse of the machinery, and perhaps even hear the whirr of the wheels in Nature's workshop. The subject is of entrancing interest to the biologist and the physician, quite apart from its bearing on the question of spontaneous generation. Whatever view may be entertained by the different schools of thought as to the nature and significance of life, all alike will welcome this new and important contribution to our knowledge of the mechanism by which Nature constructs the bewildering variety of her forms.

There is, I think, no more wonderful and illuminating spectacle than that of an osmotic growth,—a crude lump of brute inanimate matter germinating before our very eyes, putting forth bud and stem and root and branch and leaf and fruit, with no stimulus from germ or seed, without even

the presence of organic matter. For these mineral growths are not mere crystallizations as many suppose; they increase by intussusception and not by accretion. They exhibit the phenomena of circulation and respiration, and a crude sort of reproduction by budding; they have a period of vigorous youthful growth, of old age, of death and of decay. They imitate the forms, the colour, the texture, and even the microscopical structure of organic growth so closely as to deceive the very elect. When we find, moreover, that the processes of nutrition are carried on in these osmotic productions just as in living beings, that an injury to an osmotic growth is repaired by the coagulation of its internal sap, and that it is able to perform periodic movements just as an animal or a plant, we are at a loss to define any line of separation between these mineral forms and those of organic life.

In the present volume the author has collected all the data necessary for a complete survey of the mechanism of life, which consists essentially of those phenomena which are exhibited at the contact of solutions of different degrees of concentration. Whatever may be the verdict as to the author's case for spontaneous generation, all will agree that the book is a most brilliant and stimulating study, founded on the personal investigation of a born experimenter.

The present volume is a translation of Dr. Leduc's French edition, but it is more than this, the work has been translated, revised and corrected, and in many places re-written, by the author's own hand. I am responsible only for the English form of the treatise, and can but regret that I have been able to reproduce so imperfectly the charm of the original.

PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION

C'est par l'initiative du Dr. Deane Butcher que cette ouvrage est presenté aux lecteurs anglais, à la race qui a doté l'humanité de tant de découvertes originales, geniales et d'une portée très générale.

Comme un être vivant, une idée exige pour naître et se développer le germe et le milieu de développement. Il est indéniable que le peuple anglo-américain constitue un milieu particulièrement favorable à la naissance et au développement des idées nouvelles.

Pendant notre collaboration le Dr. Deane Butcher a été un critique judicieux et éclairé, tous les changements dans l'édition anglaise sont dus à ses observations. Il s'est assimilé l'ouvrage pour le traduire, et dans beaucoup de parties, il a mis plus de clarté et de concision qu'il n'y en avait dans le texte original.

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