The old philosophers who held that all things originated in the
sea were not far out of the way, if we are to believe some of
the latest biological theories or speculations. That organic
evolution began with marine creatures, Haeckel told us long ago.
That sea-water is a particularly sympathetic medium for vital
processes, has more lately been shown by Loeb in his experiments
on the fertilization of the eggs of certain marine creatures. M.
René Quinton, of the Laboratory of Pathologic Physiology of the
College de France, has published a book, entitled “Sea-water as
an Organic Medium,” in which he asserts that as the cell itself
has persisted in living organisms, being practically the same in
the human body as in our earliest marine predecessors, so the
conditions of its life closely reproduce those of primordial
times. The cell in our own bodies is bathed in a fluid that
closely resembles sea-water in chemical composition and that
approximates in temperature to that of the ocean when life first
appeared in it. (Text.)
(1803)