EVERY MAN HIS OWN LABORATORY.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19001, 25 October 1923, Page 11

EVERY MAN HIS OWN LABORATORY.

THE CHEMICAL BASIS OF INDIVIDUALITY. By Professor J. Author Thomson*, in John o’ London's Weekly. One of the large facts of life is individuality. Every living creature is itself and no other. A crystal of alum is identical with another crystal of alum, but it is quite different from a crystal of quartz; it has specificity, but no individuality. We do not mean that a hard-and-fast-line can be drawn between non-living things without individuality and living creatures with individuality ; but for practcal purposes there is a significant difference. One star differs from another in glory, but there is another kind of difference between one rose and another, between one herring and another, between two dogs belonging to the same litter. St. Paul was speaking of specificity when fie said : “All flesh is not the same flesh, but there is one flesli of men and another oi beasts, there is one flesh of birds and another of fishes.” But individuality or idiosyncracy is, as it were, specificity in miniature. ‘ —Bodily Idiosyncrasies.— The word individuality is often used to o’enote a simple form ot personality. It means that the creature is a self-contained unity. A corner of a simple animal like a sponge may he cut off without any damage to its own particular life or to that of the sponge. But we cannot play this kind of trick with a bird, where even a minute cut or lesion may he fatal. In this sense an individuality means a unified integrate, and when there is a well-defined integration not only of the body, but of the mental or psychical file as well, we speak of a personality. Oi this, again, there are many grades, culminating in man, whose personality excels that of any other created being, and may deserve a name of its own.

In this article the word individuality is used in a different sense, to sum up the peculiarities of an individual, which make it itself and no other. why should one man’s food, such as milk or eggs, be another man’s poison? Why should two brothers often differ more markedly than two cousins? Why should a Loch Fyne herring (if there are any left) be very’ different from an East Coast herring : Whv are we identifiable by our fingerprints? Why is one man particularly liable to certain diseases or to the assaults of certain microbes, while another is not troubled by these, though perhaps by some others? in short, why has each one of us his or her individuality? —Variability.—

The hereditary relation between parents and offspring, between ancestors and descendants, secures a vital inertia and sustains a specific sameness from generation to generation. We do not gather grapes off thorns or figs off thistles. Like tends to begin, and the reason for this is to he found in what is called germinal continuity. But along with the tendency to persist there is the tendency to change, and this variability is one of the central secrets of life. Only in a dim way does any biologist understand the origin of the new, especially of the qualitatively new. But in the microscopic manoeuvres which occur before, during, and' immediately after the fertilisation of the egg-cell, there are opportunities —well known to biologists—for fresh permutations and combinations of the hereditary characters. An inheritance is like a hand of cards, and there is a shuffling of the pack at the beginning of each new life. Here we have the fundamental reason for individuality. It depends partly on the shuffling of the hereditary cards and partly on mysterious changes in the cards themselves. in a recent thought provoking lecture by Sir Archibald E. Garrod, Professor of Medicine in the University of Oxford, emphasis is laid on the chemical basis both of specificity and individuality. The blood crystals of a donkey are different from those of a horse; the fat of sheep is different from the fat of pigs; the milk of a goat is different from that of the cow; the bile-salts of the dog are different from those of the cat; and similarly all along the line. As Gautier showed long ago, one kind of grape differs from another in its chemical composition. —Our Proteins.— In short, different species differ from one another in their dominant chemical compounds and in their prevalent chemical compounds and in their prevalent chemical routine (or metabolism). All living matter includes as its most essential component a mixture of proteins, and the work of Emil Fischer and others “has revealed possibilities of almost infinite variety in the groupings and proportional representations of the X 0 odd amino-acids and diamino-acids of which the protein molecules are built up. ' There must be a million million possibilities and more. “We may well believe that there are special proteins for every species, and indeed for every individual in a species.” This is the chemical basis of individuality. Every man his own laboratory. And in recognising this truth we are not being committed to the false simplicity of a materialistic view, since. there is no warrant for supposing that the physical aspect of a living creature is any less real than its physical or chemical aspect. Mentality is as real as metabolism. They are perhaps the two sides of a shield, the concave and the convex surfaces of a dome. Therefore when we speak of the chemical basis of individuality we need not imply that there is not a psychical basis as well. Perhaps, if we could rightly combine the fractions of reality that we know we should see the two bases as one. —lndividual Peculiarities.— Just as different species within a genus differ from one another in chemical structure and behaviour, so is it with individuals. Here we get the explanation, such as it is, of many familiar bodily idiosyncrasies—immunity to one disease and susceptibility to another; affectability

bv certain foods and drugs, and inborn perturbations in chemical routine which account for certain subtle and very hereditary constitutional disease. AH defend on peculiarities in the hereditary make-up. In certain eases it may be that some minute item slips out of the inheritance, with the result, perhaps, that a particular ferment is absent in the adult, throwing some corner of the machinery out of gear. In other cases it looks as if the fault was with the regulatory system which harmonises many of the functions of the body. In other words, there may lie excess or deficiency or perturbation in the activity of those ductless glands whose accelerating hormones and slowing-down chalones regulate the general metabolism of the body so that its course runs smoothly. When the pendulum swings too far in one direction there may be a dwarf ; when it swings too far in the opposite direction there may be a, giant; and these are but diagrammatic examples of idiosyncrasies. Professor ->arrod < uni pares the ductless or endocrine glands to “a system of weights and pulleys, in stable equilibrium, in which remova. o any one weight causes the whole system to hang awry.” —What We Do Not Inherit.—

It will be understood that many ot the disharmonies of the body cannot ne described as ills our flesh is heir to. ihey are due to unhealthy surroundings, or to unwholesome habits and occupations, oi to deficient nutrition (which is very (Liferent from having 4 too little to_ eat), or to the poisoning influence of intruding microbes. The disturbing influence ot the introduction of a little foreign pollen is well illustrated by the well-known nayasthma, where the provocative cause o a vexatious malady is a contemptible sniff of wind-borne pollen. What, we have been discussing are the inborn constitutional idiosyncrasies which may he serious enough in themselves to disturb the body profoundly ; which may, on the other hand, simply amount to a predisposition or liability to be disturbed by more or less extrinsic influences of a deleterious character. The trend of recent advances is to suggest that these inborn or germinal predispositions _or susceptibilities may admit of chemical description. Thus on a higher turn of the spiral we "are returning, as Sir Archibald Gar rod points out, to something very like the doctrine of diatheses which was no much in vogue in the days of our grandfathers. But the difference is this, that whereas “diathesis” used to be merely a learned word for a vaguely determined bias or proclivity, it is now being redefined as chemical individuality., —Fresh Patterns.— But we must not leave the subject without sounding the positive note. In all these discussions we are apt to emphasise minus characters such as defects, taints, and' diseases. The fact is that, for practical reasons, more scientific attention has been devoted to the seamy side of things Happily, however, there are individual new departures ,on the plus side as well as on the minus. There is progressive as well as retrogressive individuality. There are hundreds of human new departures who are not geniuses, yet are as welcome as new flowers. They' represent a fresh point of view, a new mind-pattern. It is much to be desired that parents d teachers ■would recognise more ■vividly the incalculably promise of these novel idiosyncrasies when thev are plainly on the upgrade. For it is" in these promising idiosyncrasies that wry discern tho raw materials of progressive evolution.

“Five teachers in every 17 employed by the Wanganui Education Board arc uncertificated.” This surprising statement (says the Chronicle) was made at a meeting of the board on Wednesday evening, when the subject under discussion was a rccpiest by (he Department that employment should be found for six certificated j’.nglish teachers and six trained ex-soldiers incapacitated through war service. The board was further advised that there was a lot of unemployment in the teaching profession at Homo. One of the members said the board had to find employment for the young teachers coming on, and another member said if the teachers concerned were not good enough to get work at Home they would not bo good enough for New Zealand. 1 was decided not to approve of the proposal. Incidentally it, was mentioned that .there are 1100 uncertificated teachers employed in New Zealand,

Apropos of the protest by a recentlyarrived gentleman from South Africa at (he high price of New Zealand land, comparisons ore inevitable (says the Auckland Star). Thousands of morgen of veldt have been sold at a shilling or two per morgen, the trifling cost of native labour making living less strenuous than in some countries. Comparisons are valueless, because of the lack of water on the veldt and the absence of trees. In South Africa the settlers cherish a tree apparently worth half a crown. In New Zealand the settler will burn a thousand trees worth £SOO to grow £SO worth of grass.

At an inquest in South Australia on a man who had Been blown to pieces by biting a gelignite detonator round a fuse to blow out postholes, the coroner referred to the practice of miners who often thaw explosives out on a shovel or in a fryingpan over a lire, mentioning that if gelignite is put in a fire carefully it may merely fizzle away, but that accidental detonation often causes unexpected explosions. The coroner also referred to the common habit of miners who carry explosives in the bosom of their shirts against the skin for the pur. pose of “thawing” them.

To the horror of onlookers ft, workman at Notodden (Norway) railway station came into contact with the 10,000-volt “live wire” of the power station. They expected to see him fall in a. shrivelled heap, but he went on with his work. Investigation revealed that the current had been cut off, shortcircuited some miles away, by a crow 1 pecking at the insulation while nerched on one of the carrying masts at the very moment when the man touched the live wire. But for this, the man would undoubtedly have been electrocuted. A diamond of a rich golden colour, Weighing over 20 carats, has been found at Wesselton. South Africa. It is worth about £IO,OOO. The rapidity with which the chameleon strikes with its tongue at a flying insect is such that the tongue cannot be detected with the naked eye.