DEVELOPMENT OF LIVING MATTER. 57 



fluid/' while the living matter of the tissues exists mainly in the 

 reticular stage, and is interconnected without interruption 

 throughout the body. 



The question arises, are we justified in speaking of u cells " as 

 the formative elements of plants ? The living matter of plants is 

 not materially different from that of animals, so far as its appear- 

 ance is concerned. W. Kuehne discovered vegetable lumps of 

 protoplasm exhibiting amoeboid motion and locomotion, almost 

 identical with that of amoebae. In fresh tissues of plants the liv- 

 ing matter was for a long time known to be endowed with motion, 

 as the granules were seen by E. Briicke and others, floating briskly 

 in a liquid. My own limited researches enable me to assert that 

 the granules of living matter in vegetable protoplasm are, as a 

 rule, united in the shape of a reticulum in the same manner as in 

 animal protoplasm. Besides, the researches of W. Hassloch (see 

 page 40) elucidate the identity of both animal and vegetable liv- 

 ing matter in a satisfactory manner. I may add that all cells of 

 the vegetable organism are uninterruptedly connected by means 

 of delicate offshoots, piercing the walls of the cellulose. The 

 granules of amylum are transformed living vegetable matter. 

 The plant in toto is an individual, and not composed of indi- 

 vidual cells. 



The present generation of histologists will very probably 

 never realize the harm done by the misnomer " cell," so firmly 

 established during the last forty years. Nevertheless, I shall 

 make an attempt to replace former misnomers by new words 

 and terms, the originator of which is L. Elsberg.* He says : 



The formerly unquestioned " cell" views of histologists are giving way to 

 a more correct appreciation of the living matter of the body. In pathology, 

 as in physiology, the cell doctrine has led to great advances in accurate 

 knowledge as an aid and means of research, but it has outlived its useful- 

 ness. Instead of adhering to Virchow's comparison, ' ' that every higher organ- 

 ism is like an organized social community or state, in which the individual 

 citizens are represented by the cells, each having a certain morphological 

 and physiological autonomy, although, on the other hand, interdependent and 

 subject to the laws of the whole," we now compare the body to a machine 

 in which, though there are single parts, these are materially connected to- 

 gether, and no part is at all autonomous, but. all combine to make up one 

 individual. According to the former view, the body is composed of colonies 

 of amoabse ; according to the latter, the body is composed of one complex 



* Notice of the Bioplasson Doctrine. Transactions of the American Medical Association, 

 1875. Contrihutions to the Normal and Pathological Histology of the Cartilages of the 

 Larynx. Archives of Laryngology, 1882. 



