1894.] Chemico-Physiological Discoveries: The Cell. 99 
all directions during the last half-century, yet nearly all the 
problems of life are still viewed from the standpoint of the 
cell theory; morphological facts and physiological facts are all 
tested more or less by their relationship to cell structure and 
cell function. As Whitman’ has aptly said “all the search- 
lights of the biological sciences have been turned upon the 
cell; it has been hunted up and down through every grade of 
organization; it has been searched inside and out, experi- 
mented upon, and studied in its manifold relations as a unit 
of form and function”, and yet, if I understand the matter 
aright, many morphologists to-day are inclined to protest 
somewhat against “the complete ascendency of the cell as a 
unit of organization.” We must not ignore the existence of 
the organic chemical compounds, with their peculiar molecu- 
lar structure, which compose the cell protoplasm; the whole 
secret of organization, assimilation, growth, development, etc., 
may rest upon these ultimate elements of living matter. These 
may be the actual representatives of the physiological units of 
Herbert Spencer, or the plasomes of Wiesner; they may be the 
real units of all forms of living matter, the bearers of heredity 
and the true builders of the organism whether it be simple or 
complex. These protoplasmic particles are not necessarily 
limited in their action, or in the influence they exert, by cell 
walls or other boundaries. 
The physiologist, however, like all other biologists, ee been 
wont to look upon the cell as “the unit of the manifold varia- 
ble forms of the organism” (Hammarsten), representing the 
seat of the many varied chemical processes characteristic of 
the individual tissues and organs. The cells naturally, through 
their variable activity, govern the range and intensity of the 
metabolic processes of the organism; but all this is simply a 
general expression of the idea that the chemical processes of 
the higher organism are localized in the cellular tissues of the 
body rather than in the adjacent fluids. It appears to me that 
we have every reason to believe in the existence of ultimate 
particles of living matter, both cytoplasm and karyoplasm, in- 
HE inadequacy of the cell-theory of development. Journal of Morphology, Vol. 
3, p. 639. 
