Note 176 — Chapter VI · THE CONTRIBUTIONS OF BIOLOGY AND PHYSIOLOGY

Prof. W. J. V. Osterhout, “On the Nature of Life and Death,” Science, April 15, 1921, thinks that we can measure by quantitative methods such fundamental conceptions as vitality, injury, recovery, and death, by electrical resistance, which, he thinks, is an excellent index of what is normal condition. He believes that this holds for both plants and animals, for all agents known to be injurious change the electrical resistance at once. He also thinks this resistance proportional to a substance he believes he found and decomposed by a series of consecutive reactions and that on this basis we can write an equation that permits us to predict the course of the death process under various conditions, so that we can say that at a certain stage it is one-fourth or one-half completed. Stated chemically, the normal life process consists of a series of reactions in which a substance O is broken down into S, and this in turn breaks down into A, M, B, and so on. “Under normal conditions M is formed as readily as it is decomposed and this results in a constant condition of the electrical resistance and other properties of the cell. When, however, conditions are changed so that M is decomposed more rapidly than it is formed, the electrical resistance decreases” and other properties are simultaneously altered. Thus death results from a disturbance in the relative rates of the reactions that constantly go on.