286 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS 



without fatal consequences, in contradistinction, to the 

 fatal effects following destruction of neuronal structures. 



Nevertheless, it is even then, we may take it, a sub- 

 stance highly energised, or potentially charged, and 

 capable, with neuronal metabolism, of meeting the 

 physiological, and psychological, requirements, of every 

 neuronal unit of the great central nervous system, 

 material, and dynamic. It may, therefore, be described 

 as the highest, and most finished, example, so to 

 speak, of nutritive pabulum, or plasma, to be found 

 within the organism, and, from its enormous total 

 quantity, it may be looked upon as never failing in 

 its immediate availability, and utility, in all metabolic 

 emergencies, arising within the systemic nervous system, 

 and to some extent, no doubt, within the attached, and 

 continuous, sympathetic nervous system, at least within 

 the debatable area supplied by the joint, or contiguous, 

 metabolic machinery, and plasma, of the two systems. 



Its quantity, and quality, when viewed from the 

 standpoint of nutritional necessity, must also be regarded, 

 as absolutely meeting the various requirements of one 

 great nervous system, developed within, and by, another 

 great nervous system, which latter, being sustained by 

 constant supplies of raw, but adaptable, materials, drawn 

 from the outer world, in turn converts them into suitable 

 pabulum for the former, to be utilised by it, where, and 

 whenever, required, by its infinite multitude of neuronal 

 units, individual, and grouped. 



Neuroglia, thus regarded, must be looked upon, as the 

 most essential of all the secretions for we must rank it 

 as such of the body, for from, and on, it, grow the entire 

 neuronal elements of the systemic nervous system, with 

 their histological continuations of, muscular, osseous, and 

 dermal, developments, in other words, of all the non- 

 sympathetically innervated structures, motile, and aesthetic^, 

 or of the structures evolved from the original ectoderm. 



Besides being the most essential of all secretions, it 

 lends itself to a continuation of the secretory process, in 

 that it becomes utilised by the various neurons, through 

 absorption by their dendritic processes, metabolism of 

 their cell mechanism, and histological growth along their 



