522 
POPULAE SCIENCE EEVIEW. 
zoosperms, and the stomach, after having formed vascular connection with 
the surrounding parts, produced mucus and gastric juice. The spleen can 
exist for a long while in the body of another animal, and may even increase 
in weight. The spur of a cock lived for a period of eight years in the eye of 
an ox, and acquired a weight of 396 grammes. Signor Mantegazza also 
engrafted pure fibrine, and saw it converted into pus, connective tissue, 
granular cells, and new vessels. By varying his experunents, and by studying 
the organizing process as exhibited by blood engrafted or arrested in a blood- 
vessel, he has been persuaded that the Berlin doctrine omnis cellula ex cellula 
is fallacious ; the fibrine is the important principle of the organism, and is 
the material employed to repair hving tissues and organize them. 
Food as a Means of Preventing Disease. — It seems not at all improbable 
that, as has been shown l^y Liebig in the case of plants, most of those diseases 
wLich we at present attribute to the presence of some morbid substance in 
the blood, are produced in the first instance by the absence of some of the 
proper constituents of the blood. The blood when abnormally composed will 
allow vegetable and other growths to take place in it, thus producing pauiful 
symptoms ; but if it contained its suitable components, it is most probable 
that it would be then enabled to resist the development of the materials we 
refer to. In the case of the potatoe disease, there can hardly be a doubt 
that the sap becomes deteriorated, owing to the absence of the proper pro- 
portion of potash, prior to the development of the oidium which commits 
such ravages. The idea which w^e have given has not had many advocates in 
this country, and we are glad to find that Mr. Erasmus Wilson has in some 
measure lent his support to the theory. Although Mr. Wilson does not go as 
deeply into the question as v>^e should wish, still he shows that food may well 
be employed not only in preventing but in curing disease. If, he says, it be 
admitted that food is the source of the elements of vkich the body is com- 
posed, what kind of body can be expected in the case of a deficient supply 
of food, whether that deficiency proceed from actual want, or from some 
perverse theory of refinement, founded on a false conception of the nature 
and objects of food, and ignorance of its direct convertibility into the flesh 
and blood of man ? We think Mr. Wilson is too determined a supporter of 
flesh-eating tastes. If he had his way, he would convert man into a deci- 
dedly carnivorous animal, and we do not think that either experience or an 
appeal to the anatomy of the human masticatory and digestive organs would 
bear out his views. — Yide “ On Food as a Means of Prevention .of Disease.^' 
ChurchiU & Co. Pamphlet. 
The Kola-nut as a Source of Theine. — Dr. Attfield, the director of the 
Pharmaceutical Societies’ laboratories, has reprinted his memoir on this sub- 
ject from the Pharmaceutical Journal. His analysis of this fruit showed it 
to contain about 2 per cent, of theine, whilst coffee contains only from *5 to 
2*0, and tea from *5 to 3'5 parts in 100. The presence of theine, then, at once 
points to the analogy of the kola-nut, or at least of dried kola-nut, with 
coffee, tea, and two other similar but less common substances — Paraguay-tea 
and Guarana. Infusions of one or other of these vegetable products are used 
as beverages probably by three-fourths of the human race, and each contains 
the same active principle — theine. To these must’now be added the kola-nut 
What theine really does for the system is not yet very well made out. Liebig 
