GROWTH WITHOUT A BODY.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 10417, 22 March 1912, Page 2

GROWTH WITHOUT A BODY.

SURGICAL DISCOVERY,

Tho theory of lifo and death may bo up&et by 'extraordinary experiments now being carried on by I)r Alexis Carrel, the French savant of tho Rockefeller Institute of New York, who is tho pioneer of human grafting. Professor Pozzi. a prominent Paris surgeon, presented to tho Academy ot Medicine a detailed account of Dr Carrel's latest researches, which have proved that tissues may bo cultivated apart from the organism. Dr Oarrel ascertained that fragments of tissue pl.ved in an organio liquid at a suitable temperature continue to develop during a certain time, after which growth diminishes and finally ceases, the tissue then dying. The period of development lasts from two to fifteen days. He sought to discover whether tho lifo of the tissue could not be prolonged by transferring them to now surroundings. Ho placed cultivations of tissue taken from the skin, heart and muscles, after washing them for a few minutes in a so-called Ringer solution, in fresh surroundings, whereupon they immediately began to grow more rapidly. By means of repeated washings and transferences they were kept in a state of full activity for over a month. Many cells which had undergone eighteen transferences were still active, more than two months alter the removal oi the primitive fragments of the animal's body. The longest period of life observed was sixty-one days. Dr Carrel's experiments arc carried out under conditions precisely similar to those obtaining in surgical operations on the human subject. His operating room is warmed to a certain temperature, and tho atmosphero is kept moderately moist. Then, with all tho strictest precautions of antiseptic surgery observed, he cuts off a small portion of a sarcomatous tumour (usually from a mouse, though human tissue's havo been used), and divides this into tho finest possible particles. After washing carefully in the warned salt solution, he takes up a tiny particle of tho still living cells on a_sterilised platinum wire and places it iu a single drop of warm, specially prepared blood serum. This serum must bo obtained from an animal of the samo species as that, providing the cancer tissues. The specimen is then put into an incubator kept at nil unvarying body heat. Every twenty-four hours the growing tissue cells are gently washed in warm salt solution and then put back in a fresh drop of blood serum. By constant observations under a microscope Dr Carrel has been actually ablo to see new tissue cells. He has grown a tiny particle of cells into a mass of tissue thirty times ae largo as the original portion taken.