SCIENCE. 



587 



any substance capable of true solution. Thus, ' noth- j 

 ing that lives is alive in every part,' but as long as any in- ; 

 dividual part or tissue is properly called living it is only 

 so in virtue of particles of the above-described protoplasm 

 freely distributed among, or interwoven with the textures 

 so closely that there is scarcely any part -1- of an inch 

 in size but contains its portion of protoplasm. Thus we 

 see realized the hypothesis of Fletcher, that all living 

 action is performed solely by virtue of portions of irrita- 

 ble or living matter interwoven with the otherwise dead 

 textures." The objection, however, urged by Bastian to ' 

 Beale is so very pertinent, that it must also find a place 

 here, but I shall not dwell upon other points on which 

 Beale differs from the bioplasson doctrine ; such as, that 

 living matter exhibits the same characters at every period of 

 its existence ; and that it is always perfectly structureless. 

 " It has always appeared to me," says Bastian, 1 " to be a 

 very fundamental objection to Beale's theory, that so many : 

 of the most characteristically vital phenomena of the 

 higher animals should take place through the agency of 

 tissues — muscle and nerve, for instance — by far the great- 

 er part of the bulk of which would, in accordance with 

 Dr. Beale's view, have to be considered as dead and in- 

 ert." 



In 1873, the morphological knowledge of living matter 

 became exact. In that year, Heitzmann discovered the 

 manner in which bioplasson is arranged throughout the 

 body, and announced the fact that what had until then 

 been regarded as separate form-elements in a tissue are 

 really interconnected portions of living matter ; that not 

 only are there contained no isolated unit-masses in any 

 one tissue, but no tissue in the whole body is isolated from 

 the other tissues ; and that the only unconnected parti- 

 cles of living matter are the corpuscular elements of li- 

 quids, such as blood, sperm, saliva, pus, etc., and so-call- 

 ed wandering corpuscles ; so that, to use his own words: 

 " the animal body as a whole is a connected mass of 

 protoplasma in which, in some part, are imbedded isola- 

 ted protoplasn]a-corpuscles and various not-living sub- 

 stances (glue-giving and mucin-containing substances in 

 the widest sense, also fat, pigment-granules, etc.)." This 

 announcement marked the commencement of a new era 

 in biology. 



Heitzmann discovered that the living matter as seen in 

 an amoeba is not without structure, as had, before his 

 accurate investigations, been supposed ; and that its 

 structure, in all cases when developed, is that of a net- 

 work, in Jne meshes of which the bioplasson fluid, or the 

 not-contractile, not-living portion of the organism, exists. 

 When there is a nucleus, it is connected by delicate threads 

 with the extranuclear network ; nucleoli and nucleolini 

 inside of the nucleus, as well as granules outside, are 

 portions of living matter : sometimes in lump, sometimes 

 mere points of intersection of the threads constituting 

 the intranuclear and extranuclear living networks, some- 

 times terminals of section of such threads, as first ex- 

 plained by Elmer, 1 and after him by Klein. 2 



Heitzmann discovered that what is true of the structure 

 of bioplasson in the amoeba, where a single small unit- 

 mass of living matter constitutes the entire individual, is 

 true also of the structure of bioplasson ol all, even the 

 highest, living organisms. 



To be sure much had been previously known regard- 

 ing protoplasm or living matter, but the knowledge was 



The Beginnings of Life : being some account of the nature, modes of 

 origin, and transformations of lower organisms. London, 1872, vol. i., p. 

 155- 



l " Weitere Nachrichten iiber den Bau des Zellkerns." Archiv /. mi- 

 krosk. Anatomic, xiv, 1877, p. 103. 



2 " Observations on the Structure of Cells and Nuclei," Quarterly 

 Journal 0/ M icrKcofiical Scie/icr, Jan., 1870, p. 128. " The intranuclear 

 as well as the intracellular network having, of course three dimensions, 

 includes fibrils that lie in the two dimensions of the plane of the field of 

 the microscope, as well as fibrils placed vertically to it. The former ap- 

 pear, of course, as fibrils ; but, I should like to ask, as what do the latter 

 appear, ;'. e., those situated vertically. Clearly as dots, because they are 

 seen endwise ; and for obvious reasons most of them lie in the nodes of the 

 network." 



fragmentary, until Heitzmann demonstrated not only, 

 that membrane, nucleus, nucleolus, granules, and threads 

 are really the living contractile matter, but also, ist, that 

 this matter is arranged in a network, containing in its 

 meshes the non-contractile matter, which is transformed 

 into the various kinds of basis-substance, characterizing 

 the different tissues of the body ; and 2d, that the tissue- 

 masses of bioplasson throughout the whole body are in- 

 terconnected by means of fine threads of the same living 

 matter. 



Unless these two facts of Heitzmann's discovery are 

 accepted, there cannot be urged much against the continu- 

 ed use of the word "cell," misnomer though it be. 

 Ranke, 1 afttr speaking of the "cell-wall," "cell-nucleus," 

 etc.. says : " of these component parts of the cell, one 

 or other may be wanting without the totalily ceasing to 

 be a cell. The nucleoli, the cell-wall, or the nucleus 

 may be wanting, and yet we must designate the micro- 

 scopic form a cell, or elementary organism." Drysdale 

 thus comments upon this quotation, viz.: " if any one 

 choose to describe a gun-barrel as a stockless gun with- 

 out a lock, he is free to do so ; but what good purpose 

 can it serve? Or is there even any fun in it ? The truth 

 is, this clinging to the mere name of the cell-theory by 

 the Germans seems to arise from a kind of perverted idea 

 of patriotism and of pietas toward Schwann and Schlei- 

 den." But, I think Tyson 2 has the better of the argu- 

 ment, in saying : " the word " cell " has become so inti- 

 mately associated with histology, that it is doubtful 

 whether it will ever fall into disuse, nor does it much mat- 

 ter, so long as correct notions of the elementary part are 

 obtained." Now, if there were any separate and distinct 

 " elementary part," it certainly would matter little or noth- 

 ing whether it were called " cell " or by any other name, 

 provided the name be properly defined and agreed upon. 

 It is not against the name r>ut against the idea of any iso- 

 lated individualized form-element that the objection lies. 

 Virchow maintains 1 " that the cell is really the ultimate 

 morphological unit in which there is any manifestation of 

 life, and that we must not transfer the seat of real action 

 to- any point beyond the cell." Against this statement 

 nearly every author nowadays protests, and insists that 

 vital power must be transferred from the " cell " to "liv- 

 ing matter " ; yet, after all, the disagreement, though 

 ever so strenuously declared, is a mere verbal one : so long 

 as both parties hold that "every higher animal presents 

 itself as a sum of vital unities" — no matter what these 

 unities are called or how defined. Hasckel, one of the 

 most avowed advocates of " the protoplasm or sarcode 

 theory," clings to Virchow's politico-physiological com- 

 parison, that every higher organism is like an organized 

 social community or state, in which the individual citizens 

 are represented by the "cells " [no matter how he may 

 define these], each having a certain morphological and 

 physiological autonomy, although on the other hand in- 

 terdependent and subject to the laws of the whole. Heitz- 

 mann's views necessitate the comparison of the body to 

 a machine, such as a watch or a steam-engine, in which, 

 though there are single parts, no part is at all autono- 

 mous, but all combine to make up one individual. Even 

 Huxley, the popular champion of protoplasm as the physi- 

 cal basis of life, quite recently delivered an address, be- 

 fore the International Medical Congress in London, Au- 

 gust 9, 1 881, in which he used the following language: 

 " in tact, the body is a machine of the nature of an army, 

 not of that of a watch, or of a hydraulic apparatus. Of 

 this army, each cell is a soldier," etc., etc. According to 

 Haeckel and Huxley, the body is composed of colonies of 

 amoebae ; according to Heitzmann the body « one com- 



1 The Cell-Doctrine ; it s history and present state. Philadelphia, 

 1878, p. 128. 



- Physiologie, 1872," quoted by Drysdale, loc. cit., p. 104. 



1 Die Cellularpathologie in ihrer Begriindung auf physiologische und 

 pathologische Gewebelehre, Berlin, 1858, p. 3. (Translation by Chance, 

 London, 1859, p. 3.) 



