Things Come to Life by Henry Harris, Oxford University Press, £20, ISBN 0198515383
TAKE one dirty shirt and stuff it into the neck of a vessel containing wheat. Wait 21 days and observe the transformation of grains into mice…
This unusual recipe by the 17th-century alchemist Johannes Baptista van Helmont for the supposed spontaneous generation of life was inspired by Aristotle, and the idea survived right through to the early 20th century, with Henry Bastian, professor of pathological anatomy at University College London, remaining firmly wedded to the concept. By then though, Bastian’s was a lonely voice. The scientific community…
