Author: Bastian, H. C.
Title: The modes of origin of lowest organisms: including a discussion of the experiments of M. Pasteur, and a reply to some statements by professors Huxley and Tyndall.
Description: London, New York, MacMillan, 1871. 8vo (18.5 x 12.4 cm) xii, 109, [ii], 54 pp., one plate (frontispiece). Original green pebbled and blind stamped cloth. Gilt title and vignette on the spine. Brown endpapers. = First edition. The English neurologist, physiologist and Fellow of Royal Society Henry Charlton Bastian (1837-1915) challenged, from a medical and practical point of view, the new ideas about the origin and meaning of unicellular life as supported by Pasteur, Huxley, and Tyndall. Bastian argued that he had witnessed (under the microscope) abiogenesis, the natural process by which life arises from non-living matter, such as simple organic compounds. In the end, Bastian was wrong, but by exposing the weaker arguments of his opponents he helped to force them into more rigid research. Slight fraying to spine ends, tiny oval private owner's blind stamp in front free endpaper top margin, otherwise a very good, clean copy. Rare.

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