WHAT LIFE CAN STAND

Greymouth Evening Star, 30 December 1937, Page 12

WHAT LIFE CAN STAND

EXPERIMENTS BY SCIENTISTS.

This question is rather an importane one to breeders of livestock, milk producers, fruit and meat packers, and medical men fighting bacteria, to farmers, orchardists, and foresters combating destructive pests, writes Edward F. Renshaw in “Chambers’s Journal.”

Some examples of the stamina and energy of life are illustrated by the experiments carried out by Dr. W. R. Whitney, of New Y-ork. While observing the behaviour of insects under various conditions, Dr. Whitney placed a cockroach in a glass tube which he sealed and then pumped to as near a vacuum as possible. The bug swooned and lay motionless. For a full minute it was left in that airless world, but when the tube was opened and the air gushed in, it quivered, stretched its legs, stood up, and ran away. The experiment was repeated, the time being increased to two minutes, five minutes, and finally an hour. In each case, the cockroach apparently died and came to life again. Insects were then placed in a tube filled with hydrogen at normal pressure. They soon lay down and rested, but when brought into the air again, they woke up and crawled away. Nitrogen was tried, and in this case it was found that the insects would wander around for two days without suffering any fatal or serious effect.

Dr. Whitney next took some flies and put them in a glass tube so constructed that, a regulated current, of air could be passed through it.

A FROZEN MASS. He began to lower, tine temperature of the air, and the insects huddled together on the glass floor, a .seemingly frozen mass. This low temperature was allowed to prevail for some minutes, then a 30-metre radio generator was started, the object being: to observe the influence of radio waves on the flies. The question was, could they recall life to the frozen insects, or would they kill them outright? After the radio waves had been acting on the tube for about one minute, oscillating at the rate of ten million times a second, the frozen mass began to. stir. In another minnute some insects were crawling, and soon they were all flying and buzzing around. The freezing current was still blowing through the tube, but the radio waves had heated the interior to fever temperature, and the insects felt no cold.

On top of these observations it is interesting to note the experiments carried out by Professor Alexander Smirnov, of Moscow. This doctor restored life to a man who had been dead . for 45 minutes; the cause of death was heart failure. In this case the operation had to be performed before the body became stiff. The heart was laid bare at once, and injections were pumped into it in the direct path of circulation. Ultra, short radio waves were then brought into use, and an artificial heart-beat was induced bv this means. After fifteen minutes the heart was beating normally, and circulation was restored. The pulse was taken the next day and was found to be normal. Professor Smirnov has restored life to fully a dozen' people. The dramatic results of these experiments suggest that radio waves' might be used to study the mystery of suspended animation or hibernation as it occurs in Nature. The mo.st startling, .suggestion in this connection is one which comes from Germany. The proposal is- that thd icefields of Northern Siberia or of the Antarctic islands be explored for a preserved in- the ice. It is not impossible that extinct creatures may exist in frozen preservation, for some ice in the Polar regions' is of great age. But to expect that’ radio waves, oxygen injections or any' other stimulus can restore life to a thousand-year-old carcass is—in the opinion of all the biologists who would' discuss so fantastic a subject—going too far.

Cold can be endured by many creatures with a. very high degree of immunity. Quite apart from the' ordeal of cold is the ordeal pf hunger. The bear, the ground-hog, the hedgehog, and the dormouse grow exceedingly fat during the summer, and it is this surplus food stored up in their body tissues that sustains them during the long winter sleep. When they revive in the spring they have lost from onethird to nearly one-half their weight.

FEW SIGNS OF BREATHING. Animals in a complete state of hibernation show scarcely any signs of breathing. A dormant hedgehog was immersed in water; for twentytwo minutes without injury, whereas' when awake and active three minutes’ immersion drowned him.

Apparently lite can stand a • great deal. The shell of an Egyptian desert snail was brought to the British Museum as a. specimen. Four years later, while it was on public view, an attendant noticed a trace pf slime on the card. The mount was immediately immersed in water, and presently the awakened snail stuck out its feelers and began to crawl.

There are tales innumerable of live toads and frogs found sealed up in solid walls of masonry many years old, but none of these finds has ever been scientifically checked at the time of discovery, and so science remains sceptical of all such reports. Better certified is the long life of certain bacteria recently found in coal. The German coal seam from which these microscopic bits of life were taken is rated by the geologists as millions of years old. It would seem that the microbes have been in the coal since it was laid. down. They are completely entombed, and are all of the luminous type, giving off a soft glow, like fireflies. To have withstood the enormous pressure of overlying rock and soil, and to have endured for so many thousands of centuries without free oxygen, is a demonstration of what life can stand*.

An interesting experiment would be to submit these microbes to the influence of short-wave radiation. to see what this new tool of science may do to the oldest living creatures on our planet.