THE
ASYMMETRY OF THE CYCLE OF LIFE
145
made
in some other fishes and amphibians, and especially in the smooth skate, Raja
batis.* The transient nervous apparatus of ganglion cells and nerve fibres
in the skate development functioned for a time, for about three months from the
start out the total of circa seventeen, and then quite suddenly began to
-lade away, and to undergo a slow but sure degeneration.
The
two nervous systems crop up again and again in my published writings since
1888, and, as indicating the import long attached to this antithesis, I find
myself writing in 1905 a paper, “The Cancer Problem,”** opening with a recital
of some of the facts in the history of the transient ganglion cells. All my
original work, from 1888 down to to-day, is impregnated with facts concerning
the two nervous systems, and the antithesis underlying them.. The discovery of
that antithesis has impelled and influenced all my work since that time.
With
the termination of the period of research marked by the publication of “The
Interlude of Cancer,” I recognized that my original work was approaching and
tending to converge to the work of Pasteur. The researches had led finally
into problems of the chemistry of the
ferments, and especially of the extracellular enzymes. trypsin and amylopsin.
It is not too much to say that Pasteur had founded a science of the ferments.
True, he laboured for many years at the problems of Intracellular enzymes, such
as the yeast organism, the mould, Penicillium, etc., and the enzymes
trypsin and
* Beard. J. “The Early Development of Lepidosteus osseus” Proc.
Roy. Soc. Lond., 1889, vol. xlvi., pp. 108-118 . Ibid: The History of a Transient Nervous
Apparatus in Certain Ichthyopsida: An Account of the Development and Degeneration
of Ganglion Cells and Nerve Fibres, Part I., Raja batis,”Zool. Jahrb. Morph.
Abteil . 1896, vol. viii., pp. 1-106, 8 plates.
** Ibid:” The Cancer Problem,” Lancet,
February 4, 1905.