III. Action of heat on protoplasmic life

Those investigators of germ-life who favour the theory of spontaneous generation have assumed that a temperature of 212° Fahr., or the boiling-point of the fluid which they experimented upon, was sufficient to destroy all protoplasmic life, and that the life they subsequently observed in these fluids was developed from non-living matter. I therefore made several series of experiments, in the hope that they might throw some light on the subject.