FOREWORD 



' ' LIBF?A5t:Y ^ 



MASS. ~ ' 



This monograph is the third edition of my "Submikroskopische 

 Morphologie des Protoplasmas und seiner Derivate" published in 1938 

 by Gebriider Borntrager Berlin. War and post-war conditions made it 

 impossible to republish this book in German. For that reason I was 

 glad to accept the offer of the Elsevier Publishing Company, Amster- 

 dam to translate the manuscript of the second edition into English. 



The aim of the first edition was to introduce Submicroscopic 

 Morphology as a new branch of General Morphology. As, in 1938, 

 the electron microscope had not yet become an instrument of biological 

 research, that introduction was based on the results of indirect methods 

 of investigation (macromolecular chemistry, double refraction, di- 

 chroism, X-ray diffraction etc.), which made it possible to provide 

 evidence of the arrangement of submicroscopic elements. In general, 

 one indirect method alone will not produce unequivocal evidence of 

 a structure invisible in the ordinary microscope. But a combination 

 of several such methods made it possible to exclude certain possi- 

 bilities. Submicroscopic Morphology, therefore, was an exciting and 

 inspiring field of trial and error for morphologists interested in 

 Biophysics. 



Since then, the electron microscope has made it feasible to photo- 

 graph submicroscopic structures and to check the results of the 

 indirect methods. It is a great satisfaction for the pioneers of Sub- 

 microscopic Morphology to know that their postulates as to the struc- 

 tures of gels, fibres etc. were right. On the other hand, our science 

 has lost one of its attractive charms ; we no longer have the satisfacdon 

 of inventing new methods of research and seeking the particular 

 structural arrangement which agrees with the results given by all the 

 available indirect methods and therefore must correspond to the real 

 invisible structure. This romance of discovery has given place to the 

 technical problem of obtaining objects thin enough to get the best 

 possible image in the electron microscope. 



