Intercellular Substance of Cartilage. 
101 
in this and other tissues are restricted to the granular struc- 
tureless substance I have termed germinal matter. This 
alone can communicate to inanimate pabulum new and pecu- 
liar properties and powers. No cell-wall, no matrix or inter- 
cellular substance,, no formed matters, as fat, starch, bile, 
and the like, are ever produced unless germinal matter be 
present. Without it a tissue may be changed, but it cannot 
change or alter by virtue of its own powers ; it is a lifeless 
tissue that may be acted upon, but it is no longer a living 
tissue which can change, convert, or alter inanimate matter. 
All tissues and all elementary parts consist of germinal matter 
and formed material, and all formed material was once ger- 
minal matter, and the germinal matter itself was once pabu- 
lum. But pabulum could never have become germinal 
matter unless pre-existing germinal matter had been present 
to communicate to it its wonderful powers. The germinal 
matter does not secrete the formed material, but becomes 
resolved into it. The properties and composition of tissues 
and animal fluids depend upon the relations of the elements 
which enter into the composition of the germinal matter at 
the time while these are gradually passing from the living to 
the formed and lifeless state. Do not the elements assume 
these fixed and definite relations to each other in conse- 
quence of being influenced by a power, the nature of which 
we cannot understand, but which is very properly termed 
vital ? 
When the formed material has been produced, it may be 
the seat of physical and chemical changes. Of the nature of 
these changes there can be no doubt, as they may be imitated 
artificially ; but the formed material itself, as, for example, 
the matrix of cartilage, cannot be produced artificially, nor 
can it be produced from any substance in the blood. Its 
formation is due to changes occurring in the matter when it 
was in a living state. 
I think I am justified in the conclusion that physical and 
chemical, but not vital, changes occur in the matter of which 
the fully developed formed material is constituted, while vital 
changes take place in the germinal matter alone."^ I would 
say that the matrix of cartilage is not living, but the germi- 
nal matter embedded in it is living, and the matrix itself was 
once in the condition or state of living germinal matter. The 
living matter is continuous with the matter that has lived. 
* " An attempt to show that every living- structure consists of matter 
whicli is the seat of vital actions^ and matter in which physical and chemical 
changes alone take place." — British Association, 1862. 
