BY A. JEFFERIS TURNER, M.D. 87 



Protoplasm may well be, and no doubt is of infinite 

 molecular complexity. Recent research has revealed a very 

 complicated structure in one portion of the. cell, the nucleus, 

 which by the extraordinary changes which it undergoes during 

 cell-division, must be regarded as playing an important if not 

 the chief part in this process. It would be interesting to 

 describe these changes at length, but would not advance us in 

 our argument. For these nuclear changes explain nothing of 

 the process in which they occur, they merely indicate what we 

 might have otherwise inferred that the process is a very 

 complex one. 



If we contemplate living matter from the point of view of 

 chemistry, we have sufficient evidence that it must be exceed- 

 ingly complex. At no very distant date it was believed to be a 

 peculiarity of all chemical substances derived from the products 

 of vital activity (always excepting the ultimate products of its 

 oxidation, such as water, carbonic acid, &c.), that they were 

 incapable of formation by artificial synthesis from inorganic 

 materials. The rapid progress of organic chemistry has since 

 then resulted in the synthesis of great numbers of these 

 substances, and has at the same time thrown much light on 

 their molecular constitution. Compared with that of the sub- 

 stances treated of in inorganic chemistry this constitution is 

 much more complex. But chemistry falls very far short of 

 revealing the constitution of even dead protoplasm, far less of 

 living. It has indeed been said that chemical analysis can 

 never give us any idea of the structure of living matter, because 

 in the act of analysis it has become no longer living. If life 

 be regarded as a metaphysical principle resident in protoplasm, 

 of course it cannot be considered susceptible of analysis. But 

 if not so regarded there is nothing in this objection, for all 

 analysis necessarily involves destruction, the resolution of one 

 form of matter into others which do not possess the same 

 properties. We cannot even analyse water without resolving it 

 into oxygen and hydrogen. A more serious if not fatal obstacle 

 to chemical analysis lies in the impossibility of obtaining living 

 matter in a pure condition. Leaving the nucleus out of con- 

 sideration we are in the habit of speaking of protoplasm as 

 something homogeneous. But if we consider, it cannot be so. 

 As living substance is continually undergoing decomposition, it 

 may be inferred that the products of this decomposition are 



