SPECIES IDENTITY OF NUCLEUS-PLASMA NORM 479 



as heat in its secondary depression after excitation, when it is 

 carried beyond its normal limits to its final effect ('13b). This 

 is the exact simile because practically all disease stimuli appear 

 to be primary excitants and final depressants. The parallelism 

 would undoubtedly be as true of pure depressants of disease as 

 it is for pure depressants of natural life such as cold or starvation 

 if carried far enough. However induced, depression finally 

 merges into a degeneration — the process ceases and a condition 

 ensues. But most decidedly this does not interfere with the con- 

 ception that within rather wide limits disease works its effect 

 according to the laws of stimuli as a physiological process, and 

 more than that, after the manner of the process of natural function. 



Having thus defined the nature of function, one can proceed 

 to the analysis of the ways in which the factor function may alter 

 or affect the nucleus-plasma relation. Primarily for the present 

 purpose this relates to the effect of function on the resting cell 

 as such, but incidentally its outside effect will enter. Functional 

 activity, function proper, comes first in importance. As suffi- 

 ciently suggested, it may be analyzed in two groups: First, the 

 purely quantitative reaction of a single process of activity — 

 from rest to exhaustion in a virile animal, as proved by the fact 

 that through the prime of the cell such a process proceeds from 

 and returns to a constant nucleus-plasma relation; second, the 

 alike quantitative reaction in a cell so qualitatively weakened 

 in its power of recuperation as the result of the repeated cycles 

 of activity of a life — from rest to exhaustion, then by recovery 

 back to rest — that it shows organic reducement in its resting 

 state, the senile cell. In the frankly senile cell, the nucleus- 

 plasma relation is changed thereby to a different level. 



Concerning the first group of regular quantitative reaction, 

 if the resting cell becomes active, it ceases by that act to be a 

 resting cell. It makes no difference, as I see it, whether that 

 activity be due to excitatory stimulation of whatever sort or 

 whether we admit spontaneous stimulation. Activity, however 

 induced, can only affect the cell in one direction and it must 

 be affected or there would be no activity. It proceeds to a fixed 

 sequence of changes — in order, the enlargement in equilibrium, 



