Lifelike but not Living.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLVIII, Issue 11, 11 September 1912, Page 37

Lifelike but not Living.

Several years ago the papers announced that a physicist working in 'the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge had succeeded in producing living things by the action of radium upon bouillon. At that time much less was known about radium than is known to-day, and we were ready to believe almost anything unbelievable about this wonderful substance; but (says the “Scientific American”) even then it did not take the scientists long to discover thait Burke’s “radiobes” were not living things at all. Indeed, the very same phenomena had been observed over a year previous by the French physiologist Dubois, who recognised that they were not living things. Dubois bad obtained his radiobes without the use of radium, and he has since shown that they do not depend upon radium in Burke’s experiments. Being a biologist, Dubois saw that although there are many things that behave in certain respects like Irving things, they are not on that account to be classed as living; and when we can at will reproduce certain of the phenomena of life, we are not to claim that we have created artificial life. By placing some barium chloride upon the surface of an organic jelly, there are made to appear a large* number of tiny corpuscles which undergo peculiar movements; these enlarge to a certain size and then stop growing, resembling in this respect the behaviour of microbes.

These corpuscles divide and form groups resembling a mulberry: sometimes corpuscles fuse together. At the point where a corpuscle is in contact with the jelly, there appears a growth made up of a mass of very minute roundish bodies which he calls •‘micro biods,” or little life-like holies. These he has obtained in jellies that were treated with various antiseptics. In some preparations the use of

lime soap has brought out the development of structures resembling cells with uelei in the process of division. Prof. Dubois does not claim that he has created artificial life, but he points out that these microbiods resemble living things in their manner of growth. in the character of their movements, in the appearance of cell-division, in their general structure, and even in the manner of fusing or con juga ting. Finally

they become crystallised, parsing from the active state to the dead condition. In laying emphasis on the complexity of life and on the fact that each characteristic of lift* is duplicated by wellknown non-living processes. Dubois guards himself against the charge of sensationalism, and his work thus receives mon* serious consideration from other scientists than the work of such experimenters as Burk** or Led tie.