Is It Dead Matter?

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Jun 4, 1912

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 39, No. 22.

Is It Dead Matter?

Is It Dead Matter?—Current Literature, reviewing a new book, says: “That living organisms can be obtained ‘almost at will’ from solutions which have been heated in hermetically sealed vessels to temperatures very much higher than that which is known to be their death point, is now asserted by that famous authority on the nervous system, Dr. Henry Charlton Bastian, emeritus professor at University College, London.” The media used are mixtures of saline solutions. It is said that in these mixtures, after the exposure of the tubes to light for months, develop organisms, not moving about in the fluid, but “were always motionless.” The real question is, after all, whether these organisms are not manifestations of lower forms of life, mineral or vegetable, than have come within our ken. Are not minerals alive until disintegration occurs and the power to crystallize is gone? How do we know the matter was “dead matter”? These are questions of a layman.