Measuring the Divine Spark
I
PHYSICS, someone has said, is the Aaron’s rod that is swallowing up all the other sciences. A survey of recent trends suggests that something of the kind is taking place. Certainly many of the specialized sciences are drawing increasingly upon physics to explore and explain their phenomena, and to that degree they are becoming departments of physics. Chemistry, in its fundamentals, has become physical chemistry — and it would take a clever balancer of fine points to say where physics leaves off and chemistry begins. Astrophysics is now the main concern of astronomers. Geophysics is more and more encroaching upon the preserves of the geologist. Oceanographers are finding in the physics of the sea a new approach to problems formerly regarded as biological. And biologists, peering into the living mystery of protoplasm, are asking whether its processes, too, may not be resolved into the ultrascopic mechanics of electrified particles, excited ions, speeding electrons — the action of forces wholly physical.
Of all these expansions of physics, perhaps the one that seems least credible is its suggested embracement of biology. One finds difficulty in thinking of the living cell, in which may be wrapped the brain of Newton or the hand of Raphael, as just another atomic mechanism. But since Wöhler’s synthesis of the organic product urea, the old idea of a ‘vital force’ as an ingredient of living matter has weakened — fighting a losing battle under different guises as one organic substance after another, heretofore thought of as producible only by the action of living cells, has been made in the test tube by the action of inorganic elements. The recent synthesis in the laboratory of artificial ‘cells’ which enlarge, divide, and exhibit other limited behavior characteristic of living cells, lends encouragement to the prediction of a prominent physicist that the time is not far off when life will be generated in the laboratory.
To explain the life process has become the great quest. The sphinx has changed its riddle. We know now — only too well — who it is that goes on four legs in the morning, on two legs at midday, and on three legs in the evening. But we don’t know why he does this. Why do we grow old? Why do we die? Perhaps the beginning of the answer will be found only when we have solved the more fundamental problem: Why do we live?
This fundamental problem may be broken up into any number of more detailed inquiries. Indeed, it is only by subdividing the riddle into its simpler constituents that Œdipus can make any progress at all in science. For example, why does a living cell divide? Answer that, and you begin to know why it lives.
Another of these detailed questions which lie at the root of life, and one which has long had the attention of biologists, may be indicated by the following experiment: Take a fertilized sea-urchin egg which has experienced normal growth through the first step, that of dividing into two cells. Separate the cells. Each of the two will then develop into a complete individual. You may wait until the egg has further subdivided into four cells, or even until its growth has attained eight cells; by separating them you will get eight sea urchins, whereas by leaving the group undisturbed you will get only one.
Why is this? If each cell can develop into a whole animal after it is separated, why did it not do so when it was a member of the group? What is the mechanism by which a separated cell knows that the whole burden of perpetuating its life now devolves upon it?
The same principle of correlation may be observed in plants. Cut off the tip of a fir tree. Soon one of the lateral branches will straighten up and assume the apical position. The colony of cells which constitute the tree act as if they simply must have a vertical tip; and in so doing they are exhibiting one of the fundamental characteristics of living things — that of structural polarity. But why must a tree be a polar structure? And what determines which branch shall substitute for the missing apex? What prevents it from straightening its posture when the apex is there? How does it know when the apex is gone? Neither the fir tree nor the germinating sea-urchin egg has any nerves. What is the means of communication?
Cell correlation is an old problem, one of the most familiar and mysterious in the whole field of biology. It has lured many a researcher into a long quest. Its challenge was the beginning of the discoveries to be related in this paper.
II
Dr. E. J. Lund, now research professor of biology at the University of Texas, was working in the zoölogical laboratory of Johns Hopkins University in 1914. He was experimenting with Bursaria, an almost microscopic animal which floats about in water, continually beating the hairy cilia which cover its body, and regularly beating all cilia in a uniform direction to stir up a circulation of water toward its mouth — a familiar device among protozoa to bring food particles their way. In these animals, which embody in one cell all the functions of the individual, Dr. Lund studied many curious abnormalities.
He found instances in which the cell generated a mouth at its tail end, changed the beat of cilia along that half of its body, and thus began to feed at both ends. Gradually the halves differentiated into two individuals which separated and floated away to independent existences. But in some instances one of the halves, after it had developed individuality but before separation, slowly diminished in size and was absorbed by the other half. In the latter case it was as though one individual had overpowered the other.
In trying to account for these changes in correlation, — why a tail should develop into a head, and why one unit should dominate and appropriate to itself another, — Dr. Lund recalled the strange response of another unicellular animal to electrical energy.
This creature, called Paramecium, is even more primitive than Bursaria — a tiny cigar-shaped cell covered with minute hairs which persistently beat to promote food circulation mouthward. It had been shown earlier by other experimenters that if an electric current was passed through the water in which Paramecium was floating, an immediate effect would be noticeable in the action of the cilia. The effect varied with the direction of the electric current. If the electricity flowed in such a way that it entered the head of the animal first, the tail half immediately began to beat its cilia in an opposite direction from that of the head half. It acted as though orders had been given it to stir up a circulation and bring food particles tailward. That is, it acted as the Bursaria did after growing a mouth at its posterior end. But when the electric current was reversed, with the flow from tail to head, then the beat of the cilia also reversed in both halves and the Paramecium acted as though both its ends were tails.
Through numerous experiments with many different creatures, Dr. Lund verified this strange influence of electric energy upon growing cells. He found it possible to inhibit growth, to delay growth, to reverse the direction of growth. In the case of the germinating eggs of a certain seaweed, he found it possible to dictate the orientation of the plant. Left to themselves, the globular eggs sprouted in a variety of directions, one to the right, another to the left, the next somewhere between, apparently with no rhyme or reason; but when put in the path of an electric current a remarkable orderliness appeared, and it was the side of the globule exposed to the positive electrode that developed the root.
Since this energy from outside was able to exert so controlling an influence upon the living thing, it seemed reasonable to ask if the same kind of energy might not be a factor in normal growth. Might not the organism itself be a generator of electrical energy? If so, might not its electricity influence its growth in somewhat the same way that the outside currents imposed in the laboratory influenced the cells in the experiments? Might not the organism’s own inner electrical output be responsible for determining its structural polarity — its differentiation into head and tail, into apex and root, into the universal symmetry that we find in living things?
It has long been known that muscles and nerves have electrical properties, since their action is accompanied by a release of electricity. So too with the sensitive plant and with the electric organ of some eels and fishes — under the stimulus of touch they discharge a flash of electricity. The discharges occur intermittently, like a bolt of lightning, accompanying the muscular or nervous action, and then quickly drop to zero. Since the time of Galvani and his experiment with recently killed frogs, the existence of these discontinuous currents of ‘animal electricity’ has been known, and they have formed a fascinating field for investigation — though their origin and nature remain unexplained.
In 1851 a German experimenter, Buff, discovered a different kind of electrical phenomenon in living things. He found that there was a continuous flow of current between the root tip and upper parts of a plant. This experiment was repeated by Müller-Hettlingen and confirmed by later investigators, including E. J. Matthews, who worked on the stems of hydroids and thus carried the research into the animal kingdom. Lund now began an exploration of the continuous currents, studying both plants and animals; and after more than a dozen years of concentrated work in laboratories of the University of Minnesota, the Puget Sound Biological Station, and the University of Texas, he has accumulated a wealth of evidence which seems to establish these conclusions: —
1. Continuous electrical currents exist in plants and animals, suggesting that a flow of electricity is an indispensable accompaniment of life.
2. These currents are generated by the living cells of the organism, each cell being in effect a miniature electric battery.
3. The cells vary in their capacity to generate electricity, the flow of current being strongest from young cells, weakest from old cells, and absent in dead cells.
4. The currents normally generated by living cells are of magnitudes equal to that of the artificial currents used in the experiments to control growth — thus suggesting that the cell uses its own electrical energy for the same purpose.
5. This capacity for continuous generation of electricity is a general property of living matter.
Are life and growth, then, conditioned by the electrical output of the living cell? Are aging and death the result or accompaniment of a waning of this output, a running down of the battery as its electrodes are consumed and its chemicals lose their electromotive properties? These are questions, not assertions; but certainly some of the recent experimental results lead to such questioning.
III
One brilliant result is the discovery that the apex of a living thing is electropositive, in the external part of the circuit, to more basal regions of the organism. This is a detail of great significance. For in any generator of electricity the flow of electrons in the external part of the circuit is from the negative pole to the positive — that is, from the region of high electron pressure to the region of low electron pressure. On the hypothesis that growth follows the flow of the positive electric current, this arrangement is as it should be. In every variety of living cell that has been tested, the structural polarity of the organism accords with this principle.
Thus, the tip of a tree is more active, more growing, younger, than the trunk; its cells are rapidly dividing and pushing the structure upward and outward. The galvanometer shows that the positive electricity generated by the tree is normally flowing through the wood of each branch upward and outward — from the more basal regions of the trunk into the more apical regions of the tip. The direction of growth coincides with the direction of the electrical current.
A similar statement applies to the root system. Here is another apex: the cells at the root tip are rapidly dividing and pushing the structure downward and outward. And here, too, when the galvanometer is applied, the electrical currents of this part of the tree are found to be flowing from the basal tissue above down into the root tip.
Suppose the electrical current flows against the direction of growth; what will happen then? The small hydroid Obelia, which normally grows a polyp at one end of its stem and a root-like holdfast at the other, was the subject of this experiment. If you cut a section of Obelia stem and drop it in water, regeneration will occur within twenty or thirty hours; and the end that was toward the polyp in the mother organism will invariably show the first sign of growth by sprouting a new polyp of its own. Later the basal end will develop, but in hundreds of tests it was the apical or polyp end that developed first — showing unmistakably an inherent polarity of the organism, a persistent tendency to grow in that direction.
The question was, Can this persistent tendency be overcome? Can we shut the door on growth? Can we open another door, and make growth take that direction? A number of Obelia stems were cross-sectioned, and these sections were fastened in water.
An electric current was then passed through the water in such a way that it entered certain of the sections by their apical ends.
In every one of these cases, growth was inhibited! In some instances it was delayed by as much as twenty hours. In other instances, where the electromotive force was increased, the order of growth was reversed so that a polyp sprouted from the basal end and a holdfast from the apical end — something that had never been observed in nature.
In other experiments the currents generated by the Obelia stem itself were measured, and in every instance it was found that the electrical polarity was positive at the apical end and negative at the basal. Thus, the normal flow of its own electrical output is from base to apex, which is also the normal direction of growth. But when the electrical output of the organism was overpowered by an opposing current of greater electromotive force imposed from outside, then the natural polarity of the tissue was reversed — its electric flow was reversed — and its direction of growth was reversed. Of necessity, the tissue grew backward. At least, such appears to be a reasonable explanation of the result.
May not this same result occur naturally? May not one living cell — or group of cells — develop such high electrical potential as to inhibit or reverse the potential of a sister cell, and thus exercise control over the latter? Dr. Lund thinks so, and by his unique experiments with the Douglas fir he has found evidence that the higher potentials generated in certain regions of the tree actually dominate the electrical output of other regions of the tree.
This suggests a possible key to the problem of cell correlation. Through the trunk and branches there is a continuous flow of current upward in the wood and downward in the cortex or living strata of the bark. The apical cortex, moreover, shows a higher electromotive force than the wood, and it has been demonstrated that the stronger currents generated in the cortex cells affect the less electrically active wood cells.
The apical tip of the tree is found to be electropositive to the tip of each branch. Also, the tip of each branch is electropositive to the tip of any branch below it. Thus the apex is unmistakably marked as the region of the highest electrical potential, and the cortex as the highest within the apex. When the apex is cut off, the branch which possesses the next highest potential — it would seem — is selected by its own electrical capacity to serve as the new apex. The current surging up into it from the wood below dominates it, determines its function, and the process of growth lifts the new apex to a vertical position. This is the picture suggested by the evidence. And it is important to remember that an electrical generator must of necessity be a polar structure.
Moreover, the flow of food materials within the tree conforms in general to the flow of the self-generated electrical currents. The sap flows upward in the wood as a water stream bearing inorganic nutrients in solution; some of these nutritive substances pass radially to the branches and leaves, others flow downward in the cortex.
To test the possible influence of an electric current upon sap transport, Dr. Lund placed the root end of a small plant in a water solution of red dye. The water rose in the plant uniformly, and the dye gave the wood in the plant a pinkish tinge. Then the experimenter took a fresh plant, selected two opposite branches, and attached an electrode to the tip of each branch. When these were connected in an electric circuit and a current was sent through in such a way that the electricity entered the plant by its right branch and passed out at its left branch, a marked difference appeared in the staining of the wood. The water rose scarcely at all in the right branch, but in the left, through which the electric current had its outlet, the staining was complete. Apparently the electric flow is able to inhibit transport as well as growth.
In this experiment the electrical current which, when thus artificially imposed, affected the normal flow of sap in the plant was about ten microamperes. The currents used in the experiments to orient growth in Obelia stems were of the same order of magnitude; and to inhibit and reverse the direction of growth the currents were about ten times greater. The electrical pressures used were measured in thousandths of a volt. Larger outputs of energy have been measured in the growing things themselves; the electromotive force of a Douglas fir registered as high as one tenth of a volt in a tenyear-old tree.
A tenth of a volt is not much electrical pressure in our commercial power systems — though it would be quite sufficient to support a local telephone conversation, provided the current were of the alternating type necessary for telephony. But it would n’t furnish much illumination; even the lowvoltage incandescent lamp circuit ordinarily used for automobile headlights requires six volts. So the newspaper reporter who came bustling up with an original idea — ‘Can’t we have a story about wiring a Christmas tree so that it will be made to light its own bulbs?’ — was doomed to disappointment. There is little likelihood that trees or forests may ever be hooked up as generators to supply electricity for cities, farms, and other dependent outsiders. It seems more certain that they need and use all their own energy output in the process of living. And when they cease living, they cease generating electricity.
IV
How does a living thing generate electricity? There are, in general, two ways of producing current: by pumping electrons, as with a dynamo; and by damming up electrons to a higher level of pressure, as with a chemical battery. The protoplasmic cell uses the second method, and Dr. Lund finds it to be of that particular type known as an oxidation-reduction battery. A familiar example in everyday use is the storage battery of the Ford automobile. Indeed, almost all makes of automobile now use this type of battery.
I have suggested that a battery is, in effect, an electric dam. It is a chemical arrangement so constructed that on one side of the reaction are atoms and molecules with a surplus of electrons, and, on the other, atoms and molecules with a deficiency. Whenever the sluice in the dam is open — that is, whenever the two poles of the battery are joined in a circuit — these electric particles (or, as the newest physics would have it, these wavelets) flow like water from the region of surplus, or high electron pressure, to the region of deficiency, or low electron pressure. They continue to flow until the electrical level on both sides is equal.
The difference in electrical level is obtained, in the first place, by selecting chemicals which are electromotively active with respect to one another. In an oxidation-reduction battery this means that there must be a substance with a tendency to oxidize, or remove electrons from, another; and there must also be this latter substance which will reduce, or contribute electrons to the other. In the case of the automobile battery, the electromotively active substances are lead metal, lead oxide, and sulphuric acid diluted with water.
In the living cell it has been found that under normal conditions there is a continuous process of oxidation-reduction, and that the electrical output of the cell varies with the velocity of oxidation. Shut out oxygen — as was done experimentally in many instances — and the cell ceases to produce a current. Present in every living cell is glutathione, a carbon compound with a hydrogen-sulphur group, an electromotively active substance. It would be possible to put two metal electrodes into a suitable vessel of glutathione and draw off an electric current — though such a suggestion will bring a smile to the laboratory man who finds it difficult to accumulate a gram. Dr. Lund feels confident that there are other electromotively active substances in the living cell yet to be identified. It is believed that, in the simplest case, opposite faces of the protoplasmic membrane which lines the cell perhaps serve as the two electrodes and poles of this living battery. The recent discovery, by means of X-rays, that protoplasm has a crystalline structure helps this supposition, since an electrode of necessity must be an oriented surface.
In engineering practice electric batteries are generally of several units connected together, and two systems of grouping are common. They may be connected in series, with the negative pole of one battery wired to the positive pole of its neighbor; or they may be connected in parallel arrangement, with all positive poles linked together and all negative poles linked together. Each arrangement has its advantages and its disadvantages, and the choice is determined by the circumstances.
Dr. Lund and his colleagues find that the living plant or animal connects up its battery cells in these same two ways. There are cells in which the flow of current from cell to cell is as though the units were wired in series, as in the automobile battery; in other instances the current shows that the batteries are connected in parallel. The materials which serve to connect or ‘wire’ the cells are the layers of the cell wall and the liquid which bathes all units in a film of fluid.
Thus we arrive at a biological picture which reveals living tissue as made of millions of chemical batteries, each adjusted to its process of oxidation reduction, each producing its continuous current of electrical energy, and all connected in multiple hook-ups that are a prototype of the wiring systems which we in our experimenting and engineering practice have achieved only within the last century. Ever since the first protoplasmic cell emerged from the inanimate clod and began its bold experiment of respiration, there has been this model of the electric battery. Volta, groping for the explanation of his mysterious voltaic pile, could not know that the thing was before his eyes — indeed, within his body, duplicated millions upon millions of times in living clay. Are any of man’s proud patents valid? The eardrum was the first microphone, the eye pupil the first photo-electric tube, and the protoplasmic cell now appears to be the first electric battery.
The automobile battery exhausts its energy after a period of operation. It ‘runs down,’ and we run its potential up again by recharging — a process of pumping electrons back on one side of the dam so that the electrical pressure is restored to something like its former level. Nature has invented a process of recharging its protoplasmic batteries continually, — by the food stream which serves each cell, — so that even while the electrical current is flowing through the sluice, new reserves of energy are being stored behind the dam to maintain a difference in electrical level.
Nature has not attained perpetual motion, however. The speed of the earth in its orbit is slowing down, the mass of the sun is diminishing by two hundred and fifty million tons a minute, the stars are consuming themselves in radiation; even the stellar system itself appears to be in a process of expansion, exploding, scattering itself afar, while its excited atoms waste their substance in riotous radiation. The whole physical world, from electron to universe, is running down like a clock that has lost its key, caught in the inexorable drift of the second law of thermodynamics which decrees that eventually all dams must be leveled, all streams of energy must flow downhill into a tideless cosmic sea of inaction. It is true that Dr. R. A. Millikan and others interpret the cosmic rays as evidence of a reversible process in nature, but their surmises await proof. So far as we can see, there is no exception to this resistless principle of energy degradation. The higher organism appears to be in the same boat with the inorganic radium atom.
V
The radium disintegrates with age, and the organism dies with age, and the latter process is no more inexplicable than the former. Death is something that happens to living matter, just as disintegration is something that happens to radioactive matter, and loss of magnetism is something that happens to magnetic matter. Why an iron bar loses its magnetism we do not know, any more than we know why it acquired magnetism in the first place, or what magnetism is, to go even further into the inscrutable.
Magnetism is associated with iron, nickel, cobalt, and occurs in no other element. Life is associated with carbon, is found in no compound from which carbon is absent; we may say that life is an attribute of carbon, or a characteristic of carbon combinations. Just as magnetic iron may be demagnetized by heating, so may a living carbon compound be devitalized by shutting off oxygen, for example, or by admitting cyanide of potassium or some other paralyzing agent. But suppose the supply of oxygen and of all other conditions favorable to life is maintained uniformly, and suppose all unfavorable agents are kept away — what then? Would carbon continue without cessation to exhibit its characteristic phenomenon of life? Would old age be checked, and death be postponed, while the sheltered, protected organism lived on indefinitely?
Twenty years ago Dr. Alexis Carrel took some cells from the heart of a chick embryo, put them in favorable culture conditions, and they are living yet. The average life of a chicken is five years. Cancer cells have been transplanted to other individuals through several successive generations of mice, the cancer cells outliving the average mouse many times over. It will be remembered that Leo Loeb many years ago pointed to this fact, and suggested that cancer cells may be called immortal. So too with bacteria, algæ, and other unicellular organisms which reproduce by dividing into two, each half then growing to full size and dividing, repeating the process ad infinitum. Professor Woodruff of Yale has demonstrated that there need be no termination, no limit, to the continued existence of pure-line protozoa. But this continued existence, it must be observed, is not confined to the original cell, but is distributed among the innumerable cells formed through the repeated divisions. If Cell A divides and becomes two cells which we may name Cells B, and these in turn divide into four Cells C, one finds it rather difficult to identify individual A with the 33,554,432 individuals Z which represent the life of the original bacterium at the end of twenty-five successive divisions. This multiplication and distribution of individuality and personality would hardly satisfy man’s yearnings for immortality. And yet nothing died in the long chain of changes which transformed the one Bacterium A into the millions of Bacteria Z.
We come to higher organisms. Here there are specialized parts of the carbon compounds, and the well-being of the organism is complicated by the necessity of perfect teamwork among organs, tissues, cells. Several years ago Jacques Loeb and J. H. Northrop began a series of experiments to see if the life of a complicated individual can be prolonged by surrounding it with conditions ideal for the functioning of organs, tissues, cells. They selected fruit flies as the subject for study, and, by sterilizing the newly laid eggs of the flies, obtained a few individuals free from all microörganisms. These were housed in sterilized bottles, fed aseptic yeast, surrounded with every known favorable condition and isolated from every known unfavorable condition, and — the death rate did not change, though the experiment was continued through eighty-seven generations. Death, it would seem, is inherent in the organism, and not dependent upon accident or disease.
Dr. Loeb then tried a further experiment. He separated his stock of diseaseless flies into several groups, and again placed them under ideal protected conditions. One condition only he changed — the temperature. One group of flies were allowed to live in a tropical temperature of 30° C., another group in 25°, another in 20°, a fourth in 15°, while the final group were put in the near-arctic climate represented by 10°. After a few generations the lifeexpectancy curve of the flies varied widely. Those in the temperate zone of 20° lived on the average more than twice as long as those in the torrid 30° zone, and the arctic colony at 10° lived more than eight times as long. By lowering the temperature 20 degrees, the average length of life was extended by more than 800 per cent.
These results were explained on the theory that duration of life is the time required to produce a chemical reaction, or series of reactions, the termination of the reaction being death. It is well known that temperature affects the velocity of chemical change, an increase of temperature speeding up the reaction, while a decrease slows it.
A discovery made by Dr. Lund in his experiments with the Douglas fir is a relationship between the electrical output of the tree and the temperature of the surrounding atmosphere. He found that when a record of the electrical potentials of the tree was plotted for a period of days, the curve showed a daily rhythmic fluctuation. The potentials mounted highest at midday, then gradually fell to their lowest value at midnight. Were these differences an effect of sunlight? A hut was built over the tree, so arranged that it would shut out every ray of light. The rhythm of the curve continued as before; light was not the answer. The experiment was changed to test the influence of atmospheric moisture; again the result was negative.
Then Dr. Lund transplanted a tree to a tub and brought it into the laboratory, where he maintained an approximately constant temperature. At once the curve straightened out, and in general such slight fluctuations as occurred within the room temperature were reflected by corresponding changes in the electromotive force of the tree. Other experiments demonstrated that a rise of 10 degrees in temperature would be followed by an increase of from 50 to 100 per cent in the electrical output of the trunk of the tree.
Thus, increase in temperature such as shortened the life of the fruit fly by half is accompanied by an increase in the tree’s electrical potential. A connection between heightened electroactivity and shortened longevity seems suggested — a relationship between the increased production of current by the protoplasmic battery and the duration of life in the battery.
Certainly electrical potential is indicated as a criterion of aliveness. We do not know fundamentally why protoplasm divides, why it grows, why it ages and dies; but we observe that the cells which divide and grow most rapidly are the regions of the organism which develop the maximum electrical outputs. We observe also that these cells have the highest velocity of oxidation of any in the organism. Going back still further into causes, we observe that these young growing cells have the highest concentration of the electromotively active substance glutathione.
VI
A whole chapter might be written on glutathione. Found in all living cells, more of it is present in apical (young) cells than in basal (old) cells. Recent studies show that, in the individual cell itself, glutathione is more concentrated in the apical (growing) end than in the basal. Young embryos contain more glutathione than old animals, proportionate to weight. It is a stuff of youth, of aliveness, of energy transfers; as age advances, the glutathione grows less, becomes dilute, electromotively weaker, approaches a dead level of chemical quiescence.
This raises the interesting question whether the living cell is wound up at the beginning of its existence and then runs down. If so, how does it get wound up? How is it that the germ cell, the protoplasmic spark with which each life begins, can regain or retain its high content of free energy?
The quantity of free energy corresponds to thermodynamic potential, one of the most fundamental concepts in physics. It means potential power. A weight suspended at the top of the ceiling has free energy — and it has more of it than one that is already halfway down to the floor. The germ cell seems to have a greater fall of energy than any other cell — more thermodynamic potential, more aliveness, more youth. From the moment when the germ cell first divides and begins to grow, it begins also to age. This is another way of saying that from the moment the weight begins to fall from the ceiling it begins to lose its store of energy. Not only that, but an organism ages more rapidly in youth than in maturity and senescence. When its free-energy content is gone, the cell has spent its power — the weight has hit the floor — it is dead.
Questions of rejuvenescence therefore, according to this electric theory of life, resolve into questions of energy recovery. If electrical polarity and electrical potential are the measure of youth, then the problem is how to recover to the cell its original potential difference. Solve that, and you will have solved the problem of deferring old age, of rejuvenating those already grown old, of death control.
But if one accepts the electric view of life one may doubt whether the problem is solvable in a physical world ruled by the second law of thermodynamics. ‘I must increase,’ saith Entropy to every form of energy; ‘you must decrease.’ And there appeareth no reason why the physical energy of protoplasm can escape the universal law.