Excerpt from The Transmutation of Bacteria This essay is based upon notes and observations which I collected previous to the year 1913. It was only partly written when, in August 1914, I proceeded on active service. I was able, however, to complete it in the following summer while serving with a Field Ambulance in France, and in the autumn of the same year (1915) I submitted it in the form of a Dissertation for the degree of M.D. at the University of Cambridge. The difficulties in carrying out work of this character while serving at the Front - remote from libraries and amidst "alarms and excursions" which break up ones scanty leisure - are sufficiently obvious and I trust may excuse some of its defects. Some valuable materials which I had hoped to utilise, including chapters on Viability and Agglutination Reactions, were buried by a shell explosion and could not be replaced. The claims of Army work have also precluded any attempt on ray part to bring the work up to date by reference to papers published since the beginning of the war. I particularly regret having learnt too late to include any mention of it in the following pages of the valuable research carried out by Dr Thiele and Dr Embleton on the part played by the body ferments in the pathogenicity of bacteria. Though I have endeavoured to suppress all irrelevant matter, I am only too conscious of the discursiveness of this essay. The topic is one of absorbing interest and at every step one is tempted to digress. In the words of Dante, which I have quoted on the title page, "The novelty must be my excuse if my pen has wandered at all." About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Excerpt from The Transmutation of Bacteria A consideration OF the possibilities. 1. Simple variation. 2. Varia tions in different directions associated. 3. Development of intermediate forms. 4. Slight changes in closely allied organisms. 5. Complete change in characters. (pages 3 - 12) About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

George Ohsawa's translation and interpretation of Kervran's theory of biological transmutation, in which elements can transmute to other elements in the biological body.

Stages of Transmutation: Science Fiction, Biology, and Environmental Posthumanism develops the theoretical perspective of environmental posthumanism through analyses of acclaimed science fiction novels by Greg Bear, Octavia Butler, Kim Stanley Robinson, and Jeff VanderMeer, in which the human species suddenly transforms in response to new or changing environments. Narrating dramatic ecological events of human-to-nonhuman encounter, invasion, and transmutation, these novels allow the reader to understand the planet as an unstable stage for evolution and the human body as a home for bacteria and viruses. Idema argues that by drawing tension from biological theories of interaction and emergence (e.g. symbiogenesis, epigenetics), these works unsettle conventional relations among characters, technologies, story-worlds, and emplotment, refiguring the psychosocial work of the novel as always already biophysical. Problematizing a desire to compartmentalize and control life as the property of human subjects, these novels imagine life as an environmentally mediated, staged event that enlists human and nonhuman actors. Idema demonstrates how literary narratives of transmutation render biological lessons of environmental instability and ecological interdependence both meaningful and urgent—a vital task in a time of mass extinction, hyperpollution, and climate change. This volume is an important intervention for scholars of the environmental humanities, posthumanism, literature and science, and science and technology studies.