i)2 BEALE'S PROTOPLASMIC THEORY. 



recombined into other compounds, differing often 

 widely from it. Thus, after the food is mixed with 

 and dissolved by the special digestive juices, it is 

 taken up by the bioplasts of the villi of the intestinal 

 mucous membrane. This taking up is not a mere 

 physical absorption, nor a chemical process the like of 

 anything known in the laboratory, but is strictly, like 

 all other vital actions, a growth and death of portions 

 of these bioplasts the part that grows and lives con- 

 stituting the white corpuscles which pass into the lac- 

 teals and finally into the blood-vessels, while the part 

 thafc dies constitutes the serum, or true pabulum, 

 which is still further elaborated by the bioplasts of 

 the blood-vessels and those floating in the blood itself. 

 " The food is not simply dissolved and caused to pass 

 into the blood, as would be inferred from the descrip- 

 tion usually given, but millions of masses of bioplasm 

 live and grow, pass through certain stages, and die 

 yielding up the products of their death to be taken up 

 by other bioplasm particles situated in the walls of 

 the vessels and in the blood itself" ("Biopl.," 25). 

 The true nutrient part of the blood is thus always 

 merely dead pabulum ; but the blood, as a whole, con- 

 tains floating particles of living matter besides those 

 iixed in the walls of the vessels, and generally called 

 nuclei. Thus are reconciled the opposite opinions re- 

 specting the life of the blood which have been the 

 subject of so much contention. The blood as a whole 

 does not touch the living matter of the tissues in 

 health, but it is only the dead fluid nutritive part 

 which transudes through the capillary walls. If from 

 disease the living particles pass through the capillary 



