32
The Body Electric
gun to wonder if the inner area of bone mending might be a vestige of
true regeneration. If so, it would likely show the control process in a
clearer or more basic form than the other two kinds of healing. I figured
I stood little chance of isolating a clue to it in the multilevel turmoil of a
broken bone itself, so I resolved to study regeneration alone, as it oc-
curred in other animals.
A Fable Made Fact
Regeneration happens all the time in the plant kingdom. Certainly this
knowledge was acquired very early in mankind's history. Besides locking
up their future generations in the mysterious seed, many plants, such as
grapevines, could form a new plant from a single part of the old. Some
classical authors had an inkling of animal regeneration—Aristotle men-
tions that the eyes of very young swallows recover from injury, and Pliny
notes that lost "tails" of octopi and lizards regrow. However, regrowth
was
thought
to
be
almost
exclusively
a
plant
prerogative.
The great French scientist Rene Antoine Ferchault de Reaumur made
the first scientific description of animal regeneration in 1712. Reaumur
devoted all his life to the study of "insects," which at that time meant
all invertebrates, everything that was obviously "lower" than lizards,
frogs, and fish. In studies of crayfish, lobsters, and crabs, Reaumur
proved the claims of Breton fishermen that these animals could regrow
lost legs. He kept crayfish in the live-bait well of a fishing boat, remov-
ing a claw from each and observing that the amputated extremity reap-
peared in full anatomical detail. A tiny replica of the limb took shape
inside the shell; when the shell was discarded at the next molting sea-
son,
the
new
limb
unfolded
and
grew
to
full
size.
Reaumur was one of the scientific geniuses of his time. Elected to the
Royal Academy of Sciences when only twenty-four, he went on to invent
tinned steel, Reaumur porcelain (an opaque white glass), imitation
pearls, better ways of forging iron, egg incubators, and the Reaumur
thermometer, which is still used in France. At the age of sixty-nine he
isolated gastric juice from the stomach and described its digestive func-
tion. Despite his other accomplishments, "insects" were his life's love
(he never married), and he probably was the first to conceive of the vast,
diverse population of life-forms that this term encompassed. He re-
discovered the ancient royal purple dye from Murex trunculus (a marine
mollusk), and his work on spinning a fragile, filmy silk from spider
webs was translated into Manchu for the Chinese emperor. He was the