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VI. OF THE CHANGES OF THE ELEMENTARY 

 PART IN DISEASE, AND OF DISEASE GERMS. 



Of the Nutrition of the Bioplasm of the Cell in Disease, 

 Any sketch of the structure and action of the cell would 

 be incomplete without an account of some of the es- 

 sential alterations which occur in it in disease. I propose, 

 therefore, to refer very briefly to the most important changes 

 which are known to occur in the " cell " when the normal 

 conditions under which it lives and grows are modified. 

 I have endeavoured to show that of the different constituents 

 of the fully formed cell, the bioplasm only is concerned in 

 all active change, and that this is in fact the only portion of 

 the cell which lives. At an early period of development, 

 some of the structures usually regarded as essential to cell 

 existence are altogether absent, and indeed the so-called 

 " cell " at this time is but a mass of bioplasm or living 

 matter. 



It must, moreover, be borne in mind that at allperiods of 

 life, in certain parts of the textures and organs, and in the 

 nutrient fluids, are multitudes of masses of bioplasm, des- 

 titute of any cell-wall, and exactly resembling those of 

 which at an early period the embryo is entirely composed, 

 and which, therefore, are not true " cells " at all. Some of 

 these play an important part in disease. White blood and 

 lymph corpuscles, chyle corpuscles, many of the corpuscles 

 in the spleen, thymus and thyroid, corpuscles in the solitary 



R 



