Produced by David Garcia, James Nugen, Keith Edkins and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net Transcriber's note: A few typographical errors have been corrected: they are listed at the end of the text. * * * * * THE MECHANISM OF LIFE [Illustration: Osmotic Productions. [_Frontispiece_] THE MECHANISM OF LIFE BY DR. STEPHANE LEDUC PROFESSEUR A L'ECOLE DE MEDECINE DE NANTES TRANSLATED BY W. DEANE BUTCHER FORMERLY PRESIDENT OF THE ROENTGEN SOCIETY, AND OF THE ELECTRO-THERAPEUTICAL SECTION OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF MEDICINE "La nature a forme, et forme tous les jours les etres les plus simples par generation spontanee." LAMARCK. [Illustration] NEW YORK REBMAN COMPANY HERALD SQUARE BUILDING 141-145, WEST 36TH STREET _First Impression March 1911_ _Second Impression January 1914_ _Printed in England_ * * * * * {vii} TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE Professor Leduc's _Theorie Physico-chimique de la Vie et Generations Spontanees_ has excited a good deal of attention, and not a little opposition, on the Continent. As recently as 1907 the Academie des Sciences excluded from its _Comptes Rendus_ the report of these experimental researches on diffusion and osmosis, because it touched too closely on the burning question of spontaneous generation. As the author points out, Lamarck's early evolutionary hypothesis was killed by opposition and neglect, and had to be reborn in England before it obtained universal acceptance as the Darwinian Theory. Not unnaturally, therefore, he turns for an appreciation of his work to the free air and wide horizon of the English-speaking countries. He has entitled his book "The Mechanism of Life," since however little we may know of the origin of life, we may yet hope to get a glimpse of the machinery, and perhaps even hear the whirr of the wheels in Nature's workshop. The subject is of entrancing interest to the biologist and the physician, quite apart from its bearing on the question of spontaneous generation. Whatever view may be entertained by the different schools of thought as to the nature and significance of life, all alike will welcome this new and important contribution to our knowledge of the mechanism by which Nature constructs the bewildering variety of her forms.