94 RIVALS OF THE CELL. 



origin. It is the mother of all within its own ter- 

 ritory." If the reader will be at the pains to compare 

 the whole paragraph from which this passage has been 

 quoted with a paragraph at p. 14 of Mr. Chance's 

 translation of Virchow, that terminates with the word 

 " cell-territory " (zellen-territorien), he cannot fail to 

 see the close following or copying of Goodsir. Vir- 

 chow, however, makes no reference to the source from 

 which he has obtained his cell-territory."" 



Various opinions on the nature of the cell have 

 passed current during the last thirty years, and almost 

 each quinquenniad has had a theory of its own. Thus 

 Schwann looked upon the vitelline membrane as the 

 outer cell-wall, the yelk substance the contents, the 

 germinal vesicle the nucleus, and the macula or 

 maculce the nucleolus or nucleoli. Wagner and Henle 

 regarded the germinal vesicle as the true cell, and the 

 other parts of the ovum as of the nature of superadded 

 structures. Goodsir and Virchow held the cell to be 

 the ultimate morphological element in which there is 

 any manifestation of life, and that the seat of real 

 action must not be transferred to any point beyond 

 the cell. Still finer distinctions have been drawn of 

 late years;, and much said on " plasms " and " proto- 

 plasms " or " plasmodiums " as rivals of the cell. The 

 observations of the eminent phytologist Hugo Von 

 Mohl on the " Primordial Utricle," Cienkowsky's views 



* This question was fully discussed in the British Medical Journal 

 (Jan. 12, 1861), in a leading article— " Cellular Pathology, its Present 

 Position " — being a review of Virchow's work as translated by Chance. The 

 passages referred to in the text above are placed in parallel columns. 



