Page:Collected Physical Papers.djvu/278

258 The recovery became rapid specially in the first part, complete recovery taking place in the course of 75 secs. .When the temperature was raised to 100° C., the response became greatly reduced. It is thus seen that a rise of temperature up to an optimum increases the amplitude of response and hastens the recovery in both inorganic and living substances.

Traces of certain substances are found to produce an extraordinarily great increase in the sensibility of the inorganic receivers; these act like stimulants. There are other substances which abolish the sensibility acting like "poisons."

In all the phenomena described above there is no break of continuity. It is difficult to draw a line and say 'here the physical phenomenon ends and the physiological begins' or "that is a phenomenon of dead matter and this a vital phenomenon peculiar to the living"; such lines of demarcation do not exist.

I shall in a future occasion describe a different method namely that of electromotive variation for obtaining the response of inorganic matter, and demonstrate the continuity of response in the living and the non-living.

(International Congress of Science, Paris 1900.)