43 



advanced by Fletcher,* yet the merit of the discovery 

 of the actual anatomical representative of it belongs 

 to Beale in accordance with the usual and right award 

 of the title of discoverer to him alone who demonstrates 

 truths by proof and fact. The rising generation of 

 medical men will also recognize in Dr. Beale the title 

 of discoverer because he has first and consistently 

 pressed the doctrine forward with the perseverance of 

 firm conviction in text-books and medical works. The 

 cardinal point in the theory of Dr. Beale is not the 

 destruction of the completeness of the cell of Schwann 

 as the elementary unit, for that was already accom- 

 plished by others. Nor that some constituent of the 

 cell nucleus or protoplasm, or some matter analogous 

 is embryologically the precursor of all tissues and 

 parts, for that is almost a truism considering what is 

 obvious in the origin of each individual in the ovum. 

 But that, from the earliest visible speck of genii, up to 

 the last moment of life, in every living thing, plant, 

 animal, and protist, the attribute of life is restricted to 

 one anatomical element alone, and this homogeneous, 

 and structureless; while all tne rest of the infinite 

 variety of structure and. composition, solid and fluid, 

 which make up living beings, is merely passive and 

 lifeless formed material. This distinction into only 

 two radically different kinds of matter, viz., the living 

 or germinal matter and the formed material, gives the 

 clue whereby he clears up the confusion into which 

 the cell doctrine had fallen, and gives the point of de- 

 parture for the theory of innate independent life of 



* Dr, Beale has informed me that he had not seen Fletcher's 

 " Rudiments of Physiology" before 1869. 



