PSYCHIATRY IN THE FUNCTIONAL PSYCHOSES 283 



Hering separates assimilation as only a qualitative chemical change 

 from growth as quantitative, and in like manner dissimilation 

 from atrophy. As to the transformations in the cells and the over- 

 whelming number of substances excreted from them, little is known 

 of the processes by which these are derived; but many products 

 are formed in both the ascending and descending portions of the 

 metabolic series. Disordered and imperfect adjustments of the 

 molecular arrangements of living substance may affect and arrest 

 both anabolism and katabolism; defect of the latter and not its 

 predominance can be conceived as a cause of the death of the cell. 

 In physiological theory the distinction is made between death 

 of the tissues and somatic death: in the former, it is reasoned that 

 constantly throughout life the molecules of living matter are be- 

 ing disintegrated and whole cells die and are cast away, --and 

 that life and death are concomitant; in the latter, death occurs 

 when one or more of the organic functions is so disturbed that 

 the harmonious exercise of all the functions becomes impossible. 

 This distinction has been referred to, and further inquiries are sug- 

 gested here. In respect to the death of the tissues, the "unit cell," 

 being an organism of high complexity as to its structure and func- 

 tion, and its life-process, is not failure of this life-process of the 

 cooperative adjustments within the cell truly analogous to the 

 failure of life, or somatic death, in the whole compound organism? 

 In this connection the question again arises as to the concomitance 

 of the processes of life and death, the latter being theoretically 

 analogous to the constant disintegration of living matter. Her- 

 ing's idea that assimilation and dissimilation are distinctly separate 

 from growth and atrophy permits the former to be regarded as one 

 intimately combined and normal metabolic process in a working cell, 

 having no theoretical significance except as wholly contributing to 

 the maintenance of the function of a health-perfect cell. The daily 

 shrinkage of the working and fatigued cell may be regularly made 

 up by rest and nutrition; this is not atrophy, either simple or de- 

 generative, for the continuity of cell-life may be unimpaired and 

 only the labile molecular inclusions be changed by normal use which 

 promotes the health of the cell. On the other hand, the function 

 of growth, being of a more primitive type, would appear to con- 

 tain the explaining principle of the life-process as contrasted with 

 the work-process. Consistent with this appears to be the sharp 

 differentiation by Adami between cells which have the habit of 

 growth and those which have the habit of work; these two func- 

 tions cannot be exercised by the same cell at the same time, and 

 a normal working cell may revert to the type of a vegetative cell. 

 This implies that cells of the primitive type having only the func- 

 tion of growth, their "work" (in the common usage of the word) 





