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The psychic life of micro-organisms (1894)
The psychic life of microorganisms - 1894 Author:Alfred Binet Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: other things, that the filaments do not dissolve in strongly concentrated alkaline solutions; and it is known that Bacteria exhibit this peculiar attribute of of... more »fering a great resistance to destructive agents. In the nucleus which they have penetrated, these parasites induce a pathological condition that results in destroying every manifestation of the sexual instinct in this Infusory. Among a swarm of animals of this species that are in copulation, single individuals are found that show a nucleus and nucleolus com- completely charged with Bacteria; sometimes these organs suffer an enormous dilatation, the nucleus becoming nothing more than an enveloping membrane which is filled like a huge pouch with parasites. The animal continues to live, but it no longer attempts to copulate. It is not our intention to make a full and complete study of fecundation in higher animals and plants; there is but one phase of that phenomenon that can enter into a general study of Micro-organisms, and that is the history-of the sexual elements, of their form, their movements, and lastly their copulation. We shall describe animal fecundation first, and plant fecundation afterwards; regarding these phenomena particularly from a psychological standpoint. Among metazoans, fecundation may be divided into two distinct acts. The first, and most apparent, consists of the union of the two individuals; of this we shall not have to speak here; it is a phenomenon that lies outside the limits of our investigations. The second, more deep-seated, consists in the phenomenathat take place, after copulation, between the sperma- tozoid and the ovule. There are numerous reasons for comprehending a study of the generative elements within a geneirsi-1 investigation into the nature of Micro-organisms. In t...« less