CENTRES OF NUTRITION. 



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 structures.! 

 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 re^- 

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

 other sources, the materials of nutrition, and to distribute them 

 by developement 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 ger- 

 minal 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 configuration and 

 structure of the being. As the entire organism is formed at first, 



* The nuclei of the textures. 



t Mr. Bowman in his Paper on Muscle, Philosophical Transactions, 1840, Part I, page 

 435. Cyclopedia of Anatomy and Physiology, Art. " Hfusde" 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. 



I Trans. Roy. Soc. Ed. 1 842. " On the Serretwi 8tnu'tnw, find the Lairs of its Funct 



A 



