Sir Jagadis Chandra Bose – His Life and Speeches

In certain animal tissues, a very curious phenomena was observed.  In man and other animals there were tissues which beat spontaneously.  As long as life lasted, so long did the heart continue to pulsate.  There could be no effect without a cause.  How then was it that these pulsations became spontaneous?  To this query, no satisfactory answer could be forthcoming.  Similar spontaneous movements were also observable in plant tissues and by their investigation the secret of automatism in the animal world became unravelled.

The existence of these spontaneous movements could easily be demonstrated by means of the Indian 'Bon Charal' the telegraph plant, whose small leaflets danced continuously up and down.  The popular belief that they danced in response to the clapping of the hands was quite erroneous.  From the readings of the scripts made by this plant, Dr Bose was in a position to state that the automatic movements of both plants and animals were guided by laws which were identical.

Thus in the rhythmic tissues of the plant and the animal the pulsation frequency was increased under the action of warmth and lessened under cold, increased frequency being attended by diminution of amplitude and vice versa.  Under ether, there was a temporary arrest, revival being possible when the vapour was blown off.  More fatal was the  effect of chloroform.

The most extraordinary parallelism, however, lay in the fact that those poisons which arrested the beat of the heart in a particular way arrested the plant pulsation in a corresponding manner.  Dr Bose had succeeded in reviving a leaflet poisoned by the application of one dose with a counteracting poison