36 AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC. 



ported, even by the most innovating Germans, who as yet will 

 not advance, the most advanced of them, beyond a protoplasm- 

 cell ; and that his whole argument is thus sapped in advance. 

 But what threatens more absolute extinction of this argument 

 still, all the German physiologists do not accept even the proto* 

 plasm-cell. Rindfleisch, for example, in his recently published 

 " L ehrbuch der pathologischen Gewebelehre," speaks of the cell 

 very much as we understand Virchow to have spoken of it. 

 To him there is in the cell not only protoplasm but nucleus, and 

 perhaps membrane as well. To him, too, the cell propagates 

 itself quite as we have been hitherto fancying it to do, by 

 division of the nucleus, increase of the protoplasm, and ultimate 

 partition of the cell itself. Yet he knows withal of the opinions 

 of others, and accepts them in a manner. He mentions Kiihne's 

 account of the membrane as at first but a mere physical limit 

 of two fluids a mere peripheral film or curdling; still he 

 assumes a formal and decided membrane at last. Even L eydig 

 and Schultze, who shall be the express eliminators of the mem- 

 brane the one by initiation and the other by consummation 

 confess that, as regards the cells of certain tissues, they have 

 never been able to detect in them the absence of a membrane. 

 As regards the nucleus again, the case is very much stronger. 

 When we have admitted with Briicke that certain cryptogam 

 cells, with Haeckel that certain protists, with Cienkowsky that 

 two monads, and with Schultze that one amoeba, are without 

 nucleus when we have admitted that division of the cell may 

 take place without implicating that of the nucleus that the 

 movements of the nucleus may be passive and due to those of 

 the protoplasm that Baer and Strieker demonstrate the dis- 

 appearance of the original nucleus in the impregnated egg, 

 when we have admitted this, we have admitted also all that can 

 be said in degradation of the nucleus. Even those who say all 

 this, still attribute to the nucleus an important and unknown role, 

 and describe the formation in the impregnated egg of a new 

 nucleus ; while there are others again who resist every attempt 

 to degrade it. Bottcher asserts movement for the nucleus, even 

 when wholly removed from the cell ; Neumann points to such 

 movement in dead or dying cells ; and there is other testimony 

 to a like effect, as well as to peculiarities of the nucleus other- 

 wise that indicate spontaneity. In this reference, we may allude 

 to the weighty opinion of the late Professor Goodsir, who antici- 

 pated in so remarkable a manner certain of the determinations 

 of Virchow. Goodsir, in that anticipation, wonderfully rich and 

 ingenious as he is everywhere, is perhaps nowhere more interest- 

 ing and successful than in what concerns the nucleus. Of the 

 whole cell, the nucleus is to him, as it was to Schleiden, Schwann, 

 and others, the most important element. And this is the view to 



