CHAPTER IV 



ON THE INTERNAL FORM AND STRUCTURE 

 OF THE CELL 



In the early days of the cell-theory, a hundred years ago, Goodsir 

 was wont to speak of cells as "centres of growth" or "centres of 

 nutrition," and to consider them as essentially "centres of force*". 

 He looked forward to a time when the forces connected with the 

 cell should be particularly investigated : when, that is to say, minute 

 anatomy should be studied in its dynamical aspect. "When this 

 branch of enquiry," he says, "shall have been opened up, we shall 

 expect to have a science of organic forces, having direct relation 

 to anatomy, the science of organic forms." And likewise, long 

 afterwards, Giard contemplated a science of morphodynatnique — but 

 still looked upon it as forming so guarded and hidden a "territoire 

 scientifique, que la plupart des naturalistes de nos jours ne le verront 

 que comme Moise vit la terre promise, seulement de loin et sans 

 pouvoir y entrerf ." 



To the external forms of cells, and to the forces which produce 

 and modify these forms, we shall pay attention in a later chapter. 

 But there are forms and configurations of matter within the cell 

 which also deserve to be studied with due regard to the forces, 

 known or unknown, of whose resultant they are the visible 

 expression. 



* Anatomical and Pathological Observations, p. 3, 1845; Anatomical Memoirs, 

 II, p. 392, 1868. This was a notable improvement on the "kleine wirkungsfahige 

 Zentren oder Elementen" of the Cellularpathologie. Goodsir seems to have been 

 seeking an analogy between the living cell and the physical atom, which Faraday, 

 following Boscovich, had been speaking of as a centre of force in the very year 

 before Goodsir published his Observations: see Faraday's Speculations concerning 

 Electrical Conductivity and the Nature of Matter, 1844. For Newton's "molecules" 

 had been turned by his successors into material points; and it was Boscovich (in 

 1758) who first regarded these material points as mere persistent centres of force. 

 It was the same fertile conception of a centre of force which led Rutherford, later 

 on, to the discovery of the nucleus of the atom. 



t A. Giard, L'oeuf et les debuts de revolution, Bull. Sci. du Nord de la Fr. vm, 

 pp. 252-258, 1876. 



