Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 188, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 August 1912 — MAY PRODUCE HUMAN LIFE [ARTICLE]

MAY PRODUCE HUMAN LIFE

Ultimate Possibility of It Is Suggested by Professor Macallum, the Scientist. London. —The time may come when a human being can be constructed to order in a chemical laboratory. So it is hinted by Prof. A. B. Macallum, fellow of the Royal society and a distinguished member of the British Association for the Advancement of SciJ ence. On his theory, an extra drop of this, that or the other chemical solution poured into the crucible may turn out, at will, a Dante or a Nero, a Carnegie of a dunce. "It was customary,” says Professor Macallum, “to regard living matter as unique, with a parallel in the inorganic world and the secrets involved in its actions and activities as unsolvable enigmas. There were those also who put forth, as an explanation for all these manifestations, the intervention in so-called living matter of a force otherwise and elsewhere unknown, biotic or vital, whose action was directed, according to tbe character of the structure through which it operated, to the production of the phenomena in question. Living protoplasm was, in this view, but a mark and a dium for action of the unknown force.” He says the methods of the laboratory are not as yet those of nature, because nature works unerringly, unfalteringly, with an amazing economy of material and energy, while present laboratory syntheses are but roundabout ways to the waste sink. He believes, though, that science has made a start in the right direction and is approaching the discovery of the function and composition of living cells. “To that end,” he adds, “a greatly developed study of microchemistry is necessary. This should apply the stimulus to enthusiasm in the search for reactions that will enable us to locate with great precision in the living cell the constituents, inorganic and organic, which affect its physical state and thereby influence its activity.”