OUTSTANDING BIOLOGICAL ADVANCES 13 



protoplasm. He called it sarcode, from the Greek, 

 meaning flesh-like. 



Although Dujardin pointed out that sarcode was a 

 different substance from any other known to science, 

 and that it was endowed with all the properties of 

 life, he was far from recognizing the distinctive r61e 

 it plays in nature. The conclusion prevailed that 

 it was confined to the lower animals, and this long 

 delayed the recognition that it is the living substance 

 of all organisms including, of course, the human 

 body. To reach this point took twenty-five years of 

 investigation by various men. 



The name sarcode was not retained and the cir- 

 cumstances under which the original name was 

 changed to protoplasm may be briefly stated. Eleven 

 years after Dujardin's discovery, the German botan- 

 ist, Hugo von Mohl (in 1846), described the same 

 slimy substance in plants under the name proto- 

 plasma. In the interval, it had been described, in 

 1840, under the designation protoplasm, in mamma- 

 lian embryos, by the Bohemian anatomist Purkinje. 



In 1846, after von Mohl's publication, the scientific 

 world was in the position of knowing " sarcode ' of 

 lower animals, and "protoplasm'' in certain animal 

 embryos as well as in plants. 



