The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 21: The Recent Days (1910-1914)
History
The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 21: The Recent Days (1910-1914)
World history
On January 17, 1912, experiments were commenced to determine whether
these effects could be overcome. The observations were on the heart and
blood-vessels, artificially grown, of the chicken fetus. These growths
were put into a salt solution for a few minutes at different periods of
their growth, and then placed in a new plasmatic medium. It was found
that by following this method, the tissues could be made to live
indefinitely. When an animal is in the early stages of its development,
the growth of its tissues is necessarily greater as it matures, there
being steady diminution after a certain age until the growth altogether
ceases, and the size of the animal is determined. But it was found by
subjecting these artificial growths to washings in salt solution that
the mass was _fifteen times greater at the end of than at the
commencement of the third month, showing that they do not grow old at
all!_ In the artificial growth the problem of senility and death is
solved.
It was the announcement of this "permanent life of tissues" that caused
such a furor in Paris last summer, and several eminent scientists to
demand ocular demonstration, because "the discovery, if true,
constituted the greatest scientific advance of a generation."
The following summary of this interesting and vitally important and
epoch-making work of Carrel is translated from an article published in
Paris recently by Professor Pozzi, who witnessed the experiments:
"Carrel found that the pulsations of a fragment of heart, which had
diminished in number and intensity _or ceased_, could be revived to the
normal state by a washing and a passage. In a secondary culture, two
fragments of heart, separated by a free space, beat as strongly and
regularly. The larger fragment contracted 92 times a minute and the
smaller 120 times. For three days, the number and intensity of the
pulsations varied slightly. On the fourth day, the pulsations
diminished considerably in intensity. The large fragment beat 40 times
a minute and the little fragment 90 times. The culture was washed and
placed in a new medium. An hour and a half after, the pulsations had
become very strong. The large fragment contracted 120 times a minute
and the small fragment 160 times. At the same time the fragments grew
rapidly. At the end of eight hours they were united and formed a mass
of which all the parts beat synchronically."
Experiments to date seem to establish that the connective tissue, at
any rate, is "immortal."
From this research, it is possible to arrive at certain logical
conclusions, which, however, it remains for the future to confirm. One,
and the most important, is that the normal circulation of the blood
does not succeed in freeing all the waste products of the tissues, and
that this is the cause of senility and death. Were science to find some
way to wash the tissues in the living organism as they have been washed
in these cultures, man's life might be indefinitely prolonged.
R. LEGENDRE
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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