I am a very ordinary person with some rather remarkable acquaintances. It is my purpose to give here some account of these men and women—for they are of both sexes—and incidentally to describe some of the remarkable discoveries they have made.
It was my good fortune to become well acquainted with several of these personages—for they are remarkable enough to be so called—while I was a student in a mid-western college for both sexes. Being a man of sufficient means and a bachelor with a taste for scientific studies, I have had leisure to attend many scientific conventions; and here I have been able to make the acquaintance of many other persons of brain power and industry sufficient to lead them to eminence. I flatter myself that I have, by reason of an agreeable personality, obtained an unusual knowledge of the work they have accomplished. I will admit that some of these men and women have a very limited supply of polished manners, and one or two are almost without any of the qualifications necessary in a member of polite society.—But this will develop as the story progresses.
I first met Samuel Zahn as a fellow freshman. His was a most engaging personality, for he is kind, witty and brainy. He took the lead in the class from the first day in college and was the most popular member. Needless to say he was at once chosen President of the class, and President he remains to this day. He is over six feet tall, with large limbs and a big head; since leaving college he has gained weight and improved in appearance. I visited him at his home in a large western city five years ago and we spent several days together, talking far into the nights; and during this time he had much to say about various phases of his work in biology, of which he is an enthusiastic student.
“Why is it Brown,” he enquired, “that all living beings must grow old and die? This is true of all plants and all animals. There must be some chemical reason for this universal fact.
“Before following out my line of reasoning, Brown, perhaps I should first recall your attention to the method of scientific discovery. We are accustomed, as you are aware, when traveling into new ground to form first an hypothesis as an explanation of the facts known to us. Beginning with this hypothesis, we first reason out the consequences which must follow if the hypothesis should be the real explanation. We then proceed to test these consequences by experiment. We then reason out other necessary consequences of the hypothesis and proceed further with our tests. If the results of our tests confirm the hypothesis it presently becomes a theory and in course of time a law.
“I have formed a great many hypotheses to account for the ageing of plants and animals, but under the test of experiment these have all broken down one after another. Recently, however, it occurred to me that perhaps the ageing might be due to the formation of resinous substances in the tissues by the combination of two substances one contained in the food the other in the tissues. You will remember that the insoluble resin, bakelite, is formed by the union of an aldehyde and a phenol under suitable temperature conditions. If, now, the aldehyde like body formed part of the tissue, and the phenol were contained in the food and passed unchanged into the circulation, we should have slow combination and the formation of hard material—perhaps also material in the form of fibers and therefore flexible—within the tissues, which would cause them to harden and stiffen, inducing the other changes we ascribe to old age.
“If now these phenol bodies are contained in the plant and animal juices constituting our foods they must be contained in those that are short lived in largest amount, and it should be possible to bring on old age much more rapidly by feeding short lived plants. For this purpose I used first oat straw, but I found this did not produce the desired effect. On further consideration it seemed unlikely that it should: for the ripe, and therefore dead, straw would contain only the resin and neither aldehyde nor phenol. I therefore used green oat straw and found that this brought on old age rapidly when fed to dairy cows with no other food. I then tried various additions to the green oat straw with the object of finding some substance capable of uniting with and destroying the phenol. This I have at last succeeded in finding; and I am now in possession of a reagent which will so far destroy any of these phenols contained in food, that old age is indefinitely arrested. This as you will see places a dreadful responsibility in my hands. This is not the Secret of Perpetual Youth exactly, for I cannot so far restore youth to the aged—I can only arrest decay. By feeding this antidote to a baby it may remain a baby forever. Or it may be allowed to reach any desired age and then forced to cease developing indefinitely. I will confess to you that I feel dismayed by this heavy responsibility. What do you think I should do? What is my duty?”
“This is such an extraordinary story, Zahn,” I replied, “that I think, in fairness, you should first give some proof that you are not in error in thinking your discovery a real one; and since considerable time must necessarily pass before any satisfactory demonstration of this kind can be made perhaps we had better not further discuss the matter at present.”
“Spoken with your usual clearheadedness,” he rejoined. “I must confess, however to a certain amount of disappointment in your lack of faith in accepting my conclusions.”
To this I made no rejoinder, thinking that the less the subject was discussed the better.