202 ON VARIABILITY AND ADAPTATION 



conditions other than those associated with aberrant growth, 

 it may, in the first place, be noted that cases may be recalled 

 bearing upon the cell when it passes into a latent or dormant 

 condition. While we cannot go as far as Grawitz and accept 

 the existence of " slumber cells," in which the nucleus and its 

 chromatin have become so shrunken as to be invisible, we can, 

 I think, note that with the arrest of cell function and passage 

 into an inert state, the nuclei undergo shrinkage, becoming 

 extremely small and attenuated, as in the fully formed con- 

 nective tissue, fully formed fat cells, etc. 



It is in association with cell irritation and the commoner 

 acute degenerations that the nuclear changes become most 

 evident. It is a matter of familiar knowledge that pronounced 

 changes take place in connexion with cloudy swelling and, to 

 employ the old term, fatty degeneration, as distinct from fatty 

 infiltration of the cell. In cloudy swelling which so commonly 

 accompanies the acute fevers and conditions of intoxication, 

 we note, more particularly in the cells of secretory glands, that 

 the nuclei, which in the first stage of irritation may become 

 more intensely stained, rapidly lose their staining property and 

 become indistinct, and the cell body becomes filled with granules 

 of albuminous nature. Stolnikow was apparently the first to 

 make accurate studies upon the changes that occur in these 

 degenerative processes ; many others have since noted the same 

 collection of the chromatin in the region of the nuclear membrane ; 

 the discharge into the cytoplasm (well seen in the liver cells in 

 phosphorus poisoning) ; have described these little masses as 

 first staining like nuclear substances, and later losing the nuclear 

 stain completely, the cell body becoming filled with shell-like 

 clear-staining globules. The more recent work of Schmaus and 

 Albrecht, Lubarsch, and others, has confirmed and extended 

 these observations, the former observers calling particular 

 attention to the formation of nuclear buds, as also to the hyper- 

 chromatosis and karyorrhexis in gradual death of the cells of 

 various organs. There are, needless to say, other changes seen 

 in the degenerating cell — pyknosis, or contraction and clumping 

 of the nucleus and nuclear material ; karyolysis, or complete 

 disappearance of the chromatin. These are evidently post 

 mortem conditions (that is, in the cell), and need not here be 

 considered. From those first mentioned it would seem that the 



