The origin of life: experiments with superheated saline solutions in hermetically sealed vessels.

  • Bastian, H. Charlton.
Date:
1913
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The origin of life: experiments with superheated saline solutions in hermetically sealed vessels. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    previous experiments; and if my examinations had been limited to it the results with these tubes would have been comparatively unsatisfactory. It contained many strange and interesting things, in the form of concretions mixed with granules of different kinds and hyaline crumpled membranes, though only an organism here and there in some of the deposits. But as in the case of some of the yellow solutions in which there was scarcely any deposit I had previously used the centrifuge, so now, after having removed as much as possible of the flocculent deposit with a sterilised pipette, I shook up the fluid rather briskly, so as to dislodge any organisms that might be adhering to the glass at the bottom of the tube.' The fluid was then poured into the tube of the centrifuge, and after its action all was removed with a pipette, except about the last two minims. The examination of them has in each case revealed Torula, or Torulas and Bacteria in more or less abundance, with here and there an incipient mycelium. All these tubes, but especially those that had been heated to 145° C, would have been better left for another month or longer, as the organisms were not abundant in any of them. In two of those that had been heated to this temperature (Nos. 164, 165), only a small number of single Torulas (about twenty to thirty under each three-quarter-inch cover glass) were met with ; while in another, in addition to the single Torulae, two small groups, with Cocci (Fig. 51, A, B), were found. These three tubes had been at the south window for two months ; though the remaining two, that had been heated to 145°, had only been there for one month. Yet in one of the latter the single Torulce were much more abundant, and two groups, containing respectively ten and about fifty corpuscles, were also ' What was found in tube No. 178, and is recorded in the next section, made such a procedure seem desirable.