The Gilchrist Lectures

The Rev, W. H. Dallinger on “The Modern Microscope “.

On Monday evening, the second of the Gilchrist course of Lectures took place in the Corn Exchange, by the Rev. W. H. Dallinger, F.R.S., governor of Wesley College, Sheffield, the subject being “An Hour with the Modern Microscope.”

There was again a very large attendance, the spacious room being filled in every part. The rev. Canon Brock presided.
The Chairman in introducing the lecturer gave a short history of the life of Dr. Gilchrist, by whose generosity the Doncaster Microscopical Society were enabled to offer to the public such excellent lectures at the low cost of one penny.

The Rev. Lecturer on rising was received with loud applause. He said the unity and variety of nature had always been more or less clearly seen by careful observances, but they had never been so absolutely seen, so wonderfully manifest as now; man’s power of vision having been by optical appliances lifted almost into a new science. They could now with almost absolute certainty affirm the universality and the changelessness of all nature’s laws. It was not only true that the minutest atom visible to man, and the most gigantic of suns sailing through space were obedient to universal and ever-prevalent laws – like that of gravitation – but that chemical affinity, magnetic and electric action, methods by which matters in a gaseous fluid or solid condition, were controlled, were essentially cosmical in their application, and therefore in their relations.

But with his present means of research man could discover absolutely nothing as to nature of life, or living things, beyond the earth. The phenomena manifested by burning metals in a laboratory showed the conditions for detecting the same in the sun, and ultimately in the most distant orb which would respond to man’s analysis. The conditions upon which solid bodies were rendered fluid or gaseous, and the conditions upon which gaseous bodies like hydrogen or oxygen, were rendered fluid. Were known to be applicable to the sun, to Jupiter, or to the furthest fixed star. But man’s knowledge as to the extent of the phenomena of life was absolutely confined to this earth. He could affirm nothing, even approximately, in science terms, as to the existence of life in the brother planets, which were comparatively near.

The probabilities that living things were there was high indeed, but of scientific evidence they had none, and therefore they were limited in the area of their researches to this earth. After all the subtility of their methods, the delicacy of their inquiries were pushed and their researches continued the whole difficulty as to what was called life was as great as ever. Many questions had been answered with scientific certainty during the past 20 years, but upon the question “What is life?” no answer had yet been given – by which he meant not the more definition of phenomena of life as displayed in that which live, bt an explanation of what life was – what changed matter which was not living into matter which was endowed with the striking properties of life.

This, however, was certain – that whatever might be the subtle differences between them, and whatever caused it, matter in a living condition was something highly different, not in degree but in nature and in properties, from matter which was not living. Nevertheless, they must not understand that that which was known as living matter was made of totally different elements from that which was known as dead matter, for it was not so. There was a stuff known as protoplasm in which life constantly inhered and life was not found save as the property of that peculiar substance known as protoplasm, which was made up of oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon. They know the properties of oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon as perfectly as they know the properties of water, but taking them and combining them did not give them those properties which constituted life; and therefore, it was not that which constituted protoplasm or life-stuff which was peculiar, but that which was peculiar in protoplasm was the singular way in which the elements were put together producing the new properties which were called the properties of life. (Applause).

This was equally true and universal in its application – that all living matter wherever found, and belonging to whatsoever living thing was practically alike. Not only was the life-stuff – the Protoplasm – of the brain of the philosopher, and the protoplasm of the brain of the idiot, absolutely similar, not only was the living matter constituting a man, an ape, a horse, a humming bird, absolutely alike, but in all its essentials the living matter in the brain of Sir Isaac Newton was precisely like the living which might have been on the fungus that grew on the apple tree from which fell the apple suggesting the law off gravitation. (Applause).

But when he had made that statement, he had made a statement of all that could be made concerning protoplasm – they could go no further. When they reached the last living thing, they were in the presence of properties which were unique, and which made the distance between it and the highest crystal, or the most complex non-living body practically an infinite distance. The properties of protoplasm were four: – 1stly, independent movement – that was to say that Protoplasm had the power to defy gravitation and move against it; 2ndly, protoplasm had the power of imbibition, being able to take inti its substance matter which e=was utterly unlike itself; 3rdly, it had the power of assimilation, being able to assimilate into its own substance matter which it had taken in and which was unlike itself.

Thus, it had the power to change matter which was dead into its own substance which was living. And finally, protoplasm had the power to reproduce itself, At the onset, considering these facts, he would ask them to enquire where would be the advantage of a continuous miracle to produce protoplasm out of dead matter, seeing that one of the essential properties of protoplasm was that of reproducing itself. There was no spontaneous generation. It was not wanted, inasmuch as the property that distinguished protoplasm was that in which it was found. The main point they had to keep before them would be was there any known passage from the non-living into the living stage except through the stage of living things? IT was absolutely true there was a chasm, and his answer would be through not diagonally affirmed, “No; only that which is living can produce that which lives.”

But to reach that deduction he had to rebut by analysis and lateral inquiry certain spurious evidence to the contrary. He dealt with the minutest organic forms in nature, with whose perfect life-history they were at one time – within the memory of most of them – wholly unacquainted, and they subjected them to certain tests of heat. It was easily proved that the adults of the exquisitely minute organisms could be killed at 140 Fahrenheit. If then a purifying fluid containing these organisms were heated to a point beyond that, say to boiling point – 212 degrees, then it was argued they would be sure to have killed all that the fluid contained. The flask in which they were contained was hermetically sealed, and put away seven or eight weeks, and then a drop were taken out and put under the microscope, and it was found that there was nothing living in it, they would have to conclude that those organisms arose in living things, whereas if they were living, they would have to conclude, it was said, that they arose in dead matter, because they had killed all that was in the water. He showed that, however, that this argument was fallacious since many of the organisms could exist at much higher degree of temperature than that to which they had been subjected by boiling.

If they took a vessel, and put into it a little water, and placed in that a shred of any matter which would decompose – such as beef, mutton fish, or vegetable – they would have the result to which he was about to call their attention. In about six hours, if they took out a small drop of the fluid, and placed it under a microscope of sufficient power, they would see the minute bodies represented on the screen and known as the Bacterium termo. Leaving it for three or four hours – or six or more – they would find another group of organisms, which were spiral in their form. Leaving the same water for a few hours longer they would find a third group of monads like those presented on the screen.

These would be gliding about with great power and ease, and if they watched steadily, they would find that they were passing trough a series of transitions or metamorphoses of the most marvellous kind. If they left the water another six hours, they would find the most powerful group of creatures of the four. They could see nothing with the naked eye in the water, and the question was how did those creatures arise? The answer of some was that they arose out of dead mater which was changed into those living things; but he affirmed the contrary – that small as they were they originated in parents – they came out of eggs or spores. In neither the decomposing matter, nor the water could these organisms be found by examination separately. How then did they arise?

He gave the history of the two distinct organisms, and said it was clear that the organisms when carefully studied had precisely the same kind of history as a trout, or a butterfly, or a pigeon – that was to say, that they arose primarily in parental products, that they passed through a series of metamorphoses until they reached an adult condition, when they divided into two, and so on, until by many series of self-division they increased enormously, Thus, it was seen that in the outermost border where life was found it was still true that a living organism was absolutely necessary to perpetuate and project into the future organisms like itself. The germs of these creatures were universally produced, and diffused through the air, through water, through everything, and consequently whenever they found a suitable nidus they were stimulated into hatching, and so produced living things in enormous quantities.

Physicists and biologists met together at the same point and agreed that it was only that which lived which could produce a living thing, He wanted that evening to give them the latest results he had been able to obtain; to present them with the most recent findings of very careful inquiries with the best instruments at his disposal, but in order to do this he should have to assume that his audience was not acquainted with the power of the best microscopes, and give a series of illustrations of what they would do. In the first place he wished to induce them to understand the minuteness of the organisms with which they were concerned, and he would start with an object with which they were familiar. He then showed upon the screen the head of an ordinary house spider, remarking on the number of lenses in the eye, and the fact that they could be directed to all points of the compass.

This was followed by an illustration of a spiders foot, shown side by side with the claw of a lion. He observed that the lion’s claw did not reveal to the naked eye anything like the beauty of detail which they saw in the spider’s foot with the aid of a microscope, showing that the instrument did not simply enlarge an object, but as it enlarged it also brough out details which would otherwise be hidden. After depicting upon the screen the point of a scalpel with the view of pointing out how course and jagged the work of man was as compared with what was found in nature, he showed a beautiful group of English butterflies ‘eggs, followed by a group of eggs of bird parasites. He did not think they could find a single piece of carving or engraving which was not absolutely essential for the purpose the eggs had in view, and therefore he found that nature always identified beauty with use.

The youngest member of his audience would have sometimes observed dead flies attached to a window and round the fly a sort of “halo” of white; while if they took hold of the fly and tried to draw it away, they would find that it required some little effort to do so. The white “halo” was nothing less than a fungus which attacked the fly, and was precisely the same as attacked the salmon in our rivers, and was known as the salmon disease. After depicting this on the screen, and showing a number of views of exceedingly small, but beautiful creatures, which existed in millions almost everywhere, but were invisible to the naked eye, he proceeded to ask them to think that he was about to study one of the putrefactive organisms. The life history of which he wished to make plain to them.

The view before them represented an organism so small that when they had conjured up the smallest conceivable thing, they could not exaggerate the minuteness of it. That object was only three time as large as the smallest object which was at all visible to the most powerful modern lenses, and yet they would see that it had a history of its own, which was most marked and wonderful; and it would be interesting for them to know that upon the existence of that organism, and others like it, depended our own existence, because they set free the carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen in dead bodies, so that they might be used again in living generations. The organisms before them had come from a putrifying water rat, and they were found in enormous quantities. They were most beautiful in their movements – so beautiful that he could not possibly give them any idea of them.

One of the methods by which multiplication took place was that of self-division, each of the two parts again separating into two. It was impossible to follow all, but by following one of the halves of each division, he was enabled to trace the process of division and the varied stages of life history shown on the screen. They had beautiful lenses with which to make observations upon that very remarkable and remote group of organisms, and by those appliances were enabled to accomplish very marvellous things in showing that those little creatures had the same kind of life history as organisms which were infinitely above them, and that nature’s processes were quite as perfect down in the depths of the invisible as they were in things that were visible.

It was important for them to know that it was amongst those groups of organisms that very much would have to be looked for in the future, Already men were beginning to see the very close relation that existed between the deadly zymotic disease, and the putrifactive organisms; and in proportion as they became more and more perfectly acquainted with the life history of those more and more obscure and little organisms, in that proportion would they have a key to unlock the mystery of the deadliest disease, and so take into their hands a power which he firmly and honestly believed in the next twenty or twenty-five years would give to man the ability to stamp out some of the deadliest forms of disease that attack our human race. (Loud cheers.)

The Chairman on behalf of the audience thanked the lecturer for his excellent discourse, and in reply Mr. Dallinger thanked them for their a[appreciative attention.

The Doncaster Reporter, Wednesday, January 31, 1883