NOVBMBEB 6, 1914] 



SCIENCE 



655 



chemical systems that are composed of a vast 

 number of parts, eacii such part representing 

 a particular " phase " of the system and being 

 physically, mechanically, chemically and func- 

 tionally an individual interacting unit of the 

 aggregate. Hence, it follows that the sum or 

 totality of these peculiarly modified stereo- 

 isomers per se, and of their arrangements with 

 the associated components, constitutes a 

 " stereochemic system " that is peculiar to the 

 cell; that the sum of the cell-systems is pecu- 

 liar to the tissue; that the sum of the tissue- 

 systems is peculiar to the organ; and that 

 the sum of the organ-systems is peculiar to 

 the individual. 



While the living organism had been for 

 years recognized as being in the nature of an 

 exceedingly complex physico-chemical aggre- 

 gate of interacting independent and interde- 

 pendent parts that constitute a single working 

 unit, it has been in only recent years that the 

 mechanisms that bring about cooperative activ- 

 ities of the various parts has been made clear. 

 The governing influences of the nervous sys- 

 tem were found inadequate even in the highest 

 organisms, not to speak of forms of life in 

 which such actions occur, but in which there 

 is apparently a total absence of nervous 

 matter. As an associate of the nervous system, 

 and doubtless far antedating it in organic evo- 

 lution, is a correlative mechanism of a chem- 

 ical character that is of the greatest impor- 

 tance, and doubtless equally so throughout the 

 whole range of living organisms from the 

 lowest to the highest. Every living cell, whether 

 it be in the form of a unicellular organism or 

 a component of a multicellular organism, is 

 undoubtedly in the nature of a heterogeneous 

 stereochemic system, each of the component 

 parts of the system forming substances which 

 may affect directly or indirectly the activities 

 of the processes of the other parts; likewise 

 every cell of a multicellular organism is not 

 only in itself a heterogeneous system, but a 

 part of a number of associated heterogeneous 

 systems and which by virtue of certain of its 

 products, with or without the agency of the 

 blood-vascular or lymph-vascular systems, may 

 exercise influences upon other structures, 



which structures may have or seemingly not 

 have either structural or physiological rela- 

 tionship. Thus we find that a secretin formed 

 in the pyloric glands of the gastric mucosa 

 may excite the glands of the cardia; that 

 growth is determined by some product or 

 products of the pituitary body that are carried 

 to the various structures; that the liver, pan- 

 creas and intestinal glands are excited to 

 secretory activity by a peculiar substance 

 formed in the duodenal and jejunal mucosse; 

 that carbohydrate metabolism in the liver and 

 muscle is influenced to a profound degree by 

 hormones that are formed in the pancreas; 

 that lactation is determined essentially by 

 substances derived from the corpus luteum, 

 placenta and involuting womb; that the peri- 

 ods of ovulation and menstruation are in- 

 hibited by secretins of the corpus luteum ; that 

 vitally important states of activity of the 

 generative organs are directly associated with 

 functions of the adrenal glands; and that 

 normal development, especially of secondary 

 sexual characters, is intimately related to the 

 ovaries and testicles. To these extraordinary 

 correlations might be added many others. 

 Some of the bodily structures are in this way 

 so definitely associated in their activities as 

 to constitute cooperating or interacting sys- 

 tems, so that the tissue products are comple- 

 mentary, supplementary, synergistic or antag- 

 onistic in their influences upon given 

 structures. Such correlations must be, for 

 perfectly obvious reasons, one of the most 

 primitive forms of interprotoplasmic corre- 

 lation, and we are justified, upon the basis of 

 our present knowledge, in the conclusion thai 

 each active part of a cell, each cell, each 

 tissue and each organ contributes products 

 which may affect the activities of functionally 

 related or unrelated parts. Hence would 

 follow the dictum that not only is every part 

 of a cell, every cell, every tissue and every 

 organ an individualized stereochemic unit, hut 

 also that its operations, and hence the nature 

 of its products, must ie subject directly or 

 indirectly to the influence of every other active 

 part of the organism, however different the 

 structures and functions may he. 



