INeAT U RE 
565 
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 12, 1899. 
VERWORN’S “GENERAL PHYSIOLOGY.” 
General Physiology. An Outline of the Science of Life. 
By Prof. Max Verworn. Translated from the second 
German edition by Dr. Frederic S. Lee. Pp. xvi 
+ 615. (London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1899.) 
E cordially welcome the appearance of an English 
translation of this well-known book. The first 
(German) edition appeared in 1894, and was noticed 
at some length in this journal (vol. li. p. 529). The 
in erest which it excited is testified to by the practical 
fact that a second edition in German was called for in 
1897, while translations into English, Italian and Russian 
have also appeared. 
The second edition differs from the first only in detail. 
The general plan remains the same, though, as the author 
remarks in the preface, the more important results of the 
very large number of researches in the physiology of the 
cell which have appeared during the last few years have 
been added. 
The scope of the book is “an attempt to treat general 
physiology as general cell-physiology,” and thus to out- 
line a field in which the various branches of special 
physiology might unite. The author is at some pains to 
define the cell as the unit of organised living matter— 
the smallest part which can maintain an independent 
existence ; it is the “elementary organism.” Having 
described this unit, and discussed its structure and 
chemical and physical constitution and the way in which 
the substance of which it is composed differs from non- 
living substance, the author proceeds to a consideration 
of the phenomena which are manifested by cells in 
general. He is thus led to a discussion, firstly, of the 
internal phenomena of life in their most general aspect— 
of change of substance or metabolism, of change of form, 
and of change of energy ; and, secondly, of the external 
relations of living matter, of food, of effects of temper- 
ature, &c., of stimuli, of the origin of life on the earth, 
and of the process of dying. Lastly, he returns to a 
consideration of the nature of the material of the cell, 
and seeks there an explanation of these internal and ex- 
ternal phenomena. These inquiries are sufficiently wide ; 
but the author, not content with them, includes an in- 
teresting history of physiological research, in which he 
rightly endeavours to justify his own standpoint by an 
appeal to the development of the science ; and a discus- 
sion, in true Ercles vein, of the relation of physiological 
research to metaphysics in which, among -other things, 
the investigator is invited to “ get rid of the error of the 
existence of a physical world outside the mind”! 
Those who have made acquaintance with Prof. Ver- 
worn’s views in other and earlier publications, as, for 
instance, in papers published in the AZonzst¢ (cf NATURE, 
li. p. 58), will not be surprised to learn that the tone 
of the book is somewhat aggressive. He has set himself 
the task of recalling physiologists from the barren field 
of “one-sided specialisation,” whatever that may mean, 
to a renewed consideration of the ultimate problems of 
life. He is impatient with the “ impotence of the physi- 
ology of to-day in the presence of the simplest vital 
NO. 1563, VOL. 60] 
processes.” The outworks are down, why do the workers 
stay prying into the ruins when they should press on to 
attack the central citadel, the cell, wherein the simple 
secrets of these simplest of processes are hidden ? 
No fault can be found with the purpose which is out- 
lined here, but unfortunately the reader's sympathies 
are apt to be lessened by a lack of restraint and reticence 
in the advocacy. There is an unpleasant tone of special 
pleading running through the pages, which inevitably 
raises the suspicion that the author’s outlook is perhaps 
not so broad as he would have us believe. 
A good wine needs no bush, and the virtues of an 
endeavour to bring together all that is known of the 
general properties of living matter suffer when heralded 
by an impeachment of the past achievements of physi- 
ology which is phrased so as to convey the idea that 
the nature of the processes which constitute life has not 
been touched on. In point of fact, the knowledge gained, 
amongst other things, of the internal respiration of 
muscle, of the automatic phasic activity of the cardiac 
and other tissues (due, by the way, mainly to the work 
of Gaskell, and not to that of Engelmann, as the author 
states), and of the special processes of storage and 
discharge in glandular organs, has led to a first ap- 
proximate conception of the character of the changes, 
both in matter and energy, which waits for further 
development, not upon the labour of biologists, but upon 
that of workers in the domain of molecular physics. 
It is possible that the central idea of the book—the 
assertion of the identity of general physiology with cell 
physiology—is founded upon a misconception, and we are 
inclined to doubt whether any special virtue is likely in 
the future to flow from the study of the cell. If the 
cells in question form part of tissues or organs, then the 
methods are the methods which have been employed in 
the past. The study of the cardiac muscle cell is the 
study of the heart, of the secreting cell that of the gland 
which holds it, and so on. Practically, as one learns by 
perusing Prof. Verworn’s pages, what is really new in his 
method is confined to the exaltation of the importance of 
the study of the cell when it is an independent individual, 
such as one finds in the members of the Protozoa. In 
this field he has himself laboured with no small measure 
of success. The phenomena exhibited by free-living 
cells are unquestionably of surpassing interest, but, un- 
fortunately, the study of the relatively diffuse activities 
which they manifest must be of secondary importance, 
seeing that the facts which are gleaned can only be in- 
terpreted by the aid of that insight into the finer anatomy 
of function which springs from a study of the highly 
specialised organs of the higher types where the activities 
of living matter are, as it were, analysed for us. 
This is not the only drawback. There is another, and 
perhaps more serious one, which the author nowhere stops 
to discuss. It lies in the difficulty which exists when 
minute forms are used for experiment in deciding how far 
a given result is a true physiological reaction to a stimulus, 
and how far it is a purely mechanical effect. For in- 
stance, under the heading of galvanotaxis, and in the 
section dealing with the general effect of electrical stimuli, 
a description is given of the way in which animalculz 
become grouped round one of the poles, while individuals 
suffer actual alteration in shape under the influence of a 
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