266 HALOIDS AND HALOID BASES. 



influence on their origin or metamorphosis ? Or are we to suppose 

 that the fat, which we can extract from the animal nerves by boiling 

 them with alcohol, or digesting them with ether, and whose removal 

 leaves the separate nerve-fibres like hollow cylinders with thick walls, 

 is deposited there for no useful end, and that it can be wholly free 

 from all cooperation in the function of the nervous system ? 



However opposed we may be to teleological explanations, we 

 cannot deny the importance of an enquiry into the grounds and 

 aims of obscure subjects, since it is by such means that natural 

 enquiry has ever been guided into those paths which lead to the 

 investigation of causes, and the final comprehension of pheno- 

 mena. 



We have already become acquainted with two species of animal 

 cells, in which fat is the main constituent, viz., true fat-cells and 

 certain kinds of granular cells (the so-called inflammatory globules) 

 found in milk, (Corps granuleux, Colostrum-corpuscles,) in the 

 sputa in chronic catarrh, in old apoplectic cysts, &c. Fat, how- 

 ever, would appear from some of the latest investigations of the 

 most distinguished physiologists, to play a very important part in 

 every kind of cell-development ; indeed most enquirers agree in 

 regarding it as affording the primary foundation in the formation of 

 a cell. Acherson* was undoubtedly the first to direct attention to 

 this subject by his discovery that albumen always coagulates 

 around a fat-globule placed in an albuminous solution ; and although 

 the question may not be so simple as Acherson would make it 

 appear, the presence of fat in the cell during its formation, and its 

 importance in affording the predisposing cause of cellular for- 

 mation, is no longer denied by any physiologist, whether he adhere 

 to the old theory of cell-development established by Schwarm 

 and maintained by Kolliker, or advocate the views of Henle, or 

 of Reichert. According to Hiinefeld, Nasse, and others, the 

 nucleoli invariably consist of fat. The newly secreted or recently 

 formed plasma always contains more free fat than after the nuclei 

 or cells have been deposited, a fact that is clearly demonstrated 

 in H. Miiller'sf excellent memoir on the chyle and its histologi- 



* Miiller's Arch. 1840. S. 49. [In connexion with this subject, I may refer 

 to a Memoir on " the Structural Relation of oil and albumen in the animal eco. 

 nomy," read by Professor Bennett before the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and 

 published in the " Monthly Journal of Medical Science," Vol. 8, p. 166 ; a Lecture 

 published by myself in the " London Medical Gazette," for May, 1848, New 

 Series, vol. 6, p. 140 ; and v. Wittich,, Ueber die Hymenogonie des Eiweisses. 

 Konigsberg, 1850. G. E. D.] 



t Zeitschr. f. rat. Med. Bd. 2, S. 233. 



