CENTKES OF NUTRITION. 389 



XXI. CENTEES OF NUTEITIOK (PLATE IV.) 



BY centres of nutrition I understand certain minute cellular 

 parts existing in the textures and organs. With many of these 

 centres anatomists have been for some time familiar,* but with 

 a few exceptions have looked upon them as embryonic struc- 

 tures.! I am inclined to believe in the general existence of 

 such centres, for a certain period at least, in all textures and 

 organs, and to this I wish to direct attention at present. 



The phenomena presented by these centres incline me to 

 regard them as destined to draw from the capillary vessels, or 

 from other sources, the materials of nutrition, and to distri- 

 bute them by development to each organ or "texture after its 

 kind. In this way they are to be considered centres of 

 germination ; and I have elsewhere named them germinal 

 spots adopting the latter term from the Embryologists. j" 



The centre of nutrition with which we are most familiar, 

 is that from which the whole organism derives its origin 

 the germinal spot of the ovum. From this all the other 

 centres are derived, either mediately or immediately ; and in 

 directions, numbers, and arrangements, which induce the con- 

 figuration and structure of the being. As the entire organism 



* The nuclei of the textures. 



f Mr. Bowman, in his Paper on Muscle, Philosophical Transactions, 1840, 

 Part I. page 485.^ Cyclopaedia of Anatomy and Physiology, art. "Muscle." 

 Dr. Martin Barry, in the Philosophical Transactions, and most explicitly in his 

 Paper " On the Corpuscles of the Blood," 1841, Part I. page 269, paragraph 83. 



Trans. Roy. Soc. Ed. 1842. "On the Secreting Structure, and the Laws 

 of its Functions." 



