SCIENCE. 



585 



Fig. 3. shows granules of various sizes in the basis- 

 substance with lower power of the microscope, which 

 granules are seen with higher powers to be connected 

 with the network of living matter, as shown by fig. 4. 



Doubt as to the interpretation is impossible : instead 

 of being a mass of basis-substance in which a number of 

 cartilage corpuscles are imbedded, hyaline cartilage is a 

 filigree of living matter, in the meshes of which a num- 

 ber of blocks of basis-substance are imbedded. 



the study of cartilages has led to the cell-doctrine, which 

 at the time of its establishment was a great advance in 

 biological science, so the further study of cartilage has 

 supplied the basis for a generalization which is a further 

 development, and must take the place of the cell-doc- 

 trine. This is Heitzmann's doctrine of living matter, or, 

 as I have named it, the bioplasson-doctrine. 



When the term "cell" was introduced in 1838 and 

 1839, by Schleiden and Schwann, it was believed that 



Figure i. — Plate of the Thyroid Cartilage of Adult. Longitudinal Section x 100. 



A. Perichondrium towards the mucus membrane. 



B. Perichrondrium toward the skin. 



Now, for our subject proper. 



The founder of the Cell-Doctrine, Schwann, has re- 

 corded in the Introduction to his great work published in 

 1839 that the doctrine was based to a large extent upon 

 investigation of the constitution of cartilage. After 

 Johannes Muller had described cartilage-corpuscles that 

 were hollow, .and Gurlt had spoken of some as vesicles, — 

 when Schwann had succeeded, as he thought, " in actually 



Figure 2. — Thyroid Cartilage of Adult, kept in strong Alcohol. Hori- 

 zontal Section x 1200. 



C. Shrivelled cartilage corpuscle. 

 O. Longitudinal oS-shoots. 

 R. Reticulum in basis-substance. 

 G. Granules of living matter. 



observing the proper wall of the cartilage corpuscles, 

 first in the branchial cartilages of the frog's larva? and 

 subsequently also in the fish," he was led by these and 

 other researches to conjecture " that the cellular formation 

 might be a widely extended, perhaps a universal, principle 

 for the formation of organic substances." And just^as 



F. Fibrous portion of cartilage in the centre. 



H. Hyaline portion, on eithtr side, near the perichondrium. 



on ultimate morphological analysis every plant and every 

 animal would be found to consist of a number of minute 

 vesicles or sacs, enclosing liquid contents in which is 

 suspended a more solid body, the nucleus. For fully 

 twenty years this idea has been known to be erroneous. 

 In fact, Goodsir, nearly forty years ago — only a few years 

 that is. after Schwann had established the cell-doctrine and 

 attributed the vital power to the cell-membrane, I say, 



f'M 

 m 



Figure 3. — Thyroid Cartilage of Adult. Horizontal Section x 600. 

 C. Cartilage corpuscle. 



F. Fibrous portion of cartilage. 



G. Granules of living matter. 



nearly forty years ago Goodsir had experimentally deter- 

 mined that the seat of the vital process of secretion is not 

 in the vesicle as such, but in the so-called cell contents ; 

 Naegeli, in 1845, and Alexander Braun, in 1851, had also 

 shown the cell-wall to be comparatively unimportant ; 

 and in 1857 Leydig had declared the "cell" to consist 

 only of a soft substance enclosing a nucleus. Certainly, 

 twenty years ago it was proved beyond dispute by Max 



