

On “ Plummer's Bodies” and Reproductive Cells. 231 
They lie in the cytoplasm of the cancer cell, and usually in close proximity 
to the nucleus. In size, they vary from excessive minuteness to that of the 
nucleus itself. | 
The special interest attaching to them depends on the fact that they have 
commonly been regarded as peculiar to cancerous cells, although Honda* 
believes he has occasionally also encountered them in inflammatory tissues. 
They have been variously interpreted. Some investigators have regarded 
them as parasitic organisms, more or less intimately connected with the 
etiology of the disease, whilst others have seen in them a differentiation of 
the cytoplasm of the cancerous cell itself. It has been suggested also that: 
they might be derived from the centrosomes within the archoplasm,f but the 
observations of Benda{ that centrosomes coexisted independently of them in 
the cell, has rightly been held to disprove this hypothesis. 
Our own investigations indicate, however, that there are good grounds for 
reconsidering the whole position, and a comparison of the processes that. 
normally obtain during the final stages of development of the reproductive 
elements in man and the other mammalia, appear to us strongly to suggest 
that a parallel between the Plimmer Bodies of cancer and certain vesicular 
structures occurring regularly in the gametogenic, but not in the ordinary 
somatic, cells, may be found to hold good. 
It was shown by one of us,§ in 1895, that during the prophase of the hetero-. 
type (first maiotic) mitosis of the spermatogenetic cells, the archoplasm 
undergoes a highly characteristic and peculiar metamorphosis. In normal 
somatic, or premaiotic, cells the archoplasm is seen to lie beside the nucleus 
as a dusky mass of protoplasm in which are contained the centrosomes.. 
That is, the attraction sphere consists of the archoplasm plus the centro- 
somes. 
But during the prophase of the heterotype mitosis these constituents. 
become separated. The centrosomes are found to lie owtside of and detached 
from the archoplasm (fig. 4). At the same time the archoplasm itself under-- 
goes a change. It becomes vesiculated, and finally, at the close of this cell 
generation, it is lost in the general cytoplasm of the daughter cells. 
In the prophase of the second maiotic division (homotype) the same 
phenomena recur. When the homotype mitosis is over, the constituents of 
* Honda, ‘ Virchow’s Archiv,’ vol. 174. 
+ Borrel, ‘An. Inst. Past.,’ vol. 15. This author was on the right track in attributing 
importance to the archoplasm, but the erroneous interpretation placed on the centrosomes. 
precluded his arriving at a satisfactory conclusion as to the nature of the bodies under 
discussion. 
{ Benda, ‘ Verh. deutsch. Gesellsch. f. Chir.,’ 1902. 
§ Moore, ‘Internat. Monatschr. f. Anat. v. Physiologie,’ vol. 11. 
