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.

    33/134 (page 29)
    new experimental vessels were this time to be exposed to diffuse daylight,' and half the summer was over before the first batch of tubes was exposed (on a protected balcony facing the East), I did not open any of them till six months had elapsed—that is, till last January. Then, and during the first half of February, I examined the contents of a large proportion of the twenty hermetically sealed tubes that had been heated only to 100° C, and was much surprised at finding no organisms in any of them. That first led me to suspect some difference in the consti- tution of these solutions, and to make inquiries as to whether the sodium silicate used for the latter experiments was from the same stock as that which had been sold to me and used in 1906. I was then informed that the supply of last summer had come from a different stock ; and on comparing it with a small quantity of the old preparation still in my possession, some distinct differences between them were ascertained. I was, therefore, induced to get supplies of sodium silicate from several other sources, and to make many comparative trials with solutions varying only in the one respect that the sodium silicate was from a different source. The results of these trials have served to show that solutions made from a supply obtained from Allen and Hanbury early in March last, and heated only to 100° C. for ten minutes, would give positive results in about the same time as the other solutions did that were made with sodium silicate obtained from Martindale in 1906; that is, in four to six weeks for the colourless, and three to four months for the yellow solutions.^ ' Owing to my residence in the country, and having no means of making proper use of an incubator. ' This sample of sodium silicate has a specific gravity of 1.44, though it is always used by me diluted with an equal bulk of distilled water. A tin containing some of the silicate of this make has been reserved by Messrs. Allen and Hanbury at 6 Vera Street, Oxford Street, at my request, in case others may wish to obtain some of the same sample for a repetition of the experiments.