Note 16 — Chapter II

See Jagadis Chunder Bose, Response in the Living and the Non-Living, passim. The following passage sums up the results of many delicate experiments in the response to electrical stimulus. “We have seen,” writes the Indian physicist, “that the criterion by which vital response is differentiated is its abolition by the action of certain reagents—the so-called poisons. We find, however, that ‘poisons’ also abolish the response in plants and metals. Just as animal tissues pass from a state of responsiveness while living to a state of irresponsiveness when killed by poisons, so also we find metals transformed from a responsive to an irresponsive condition by the action of similar poisonous reagents” (p. 188).