STARVATION OF VEGETABLE AND ANIMAL TISSUES. 
51 
lure a gradual emaciation or atrophy of the organic albumen, 
but no breaking down of the cells into detritus.’’^^ 
Although practical experience in regard to the effects of 
insufficient nourishment on the population of famine- stricken 
areas, as well as many phenomena in the organs of those dying 
of diseases incident on starvation, rendered the accuracy of such 
conclusions very questionable, it yet appeared necessary to in- 
vestigate the subject experimentally, more especially as the inter- 
pretation of the phenomena presented by the tissues of subjects 
of famine dying of special diseases, such as diarrhoea and dysen- 
tery, is beset with certain fallacies dependent partly on the 
presence of the diseased conditions themselves as distinct from 
non-complicated starvation, and partly on the remedial treatment 
which may have been employed. The results of experimental 
inquiry into the subject occupy the earlier sections of this report 
as an introduction to the details regarding the phenomena 
observed in the human subject. 
In regard to all the higher forms of life, whether animal or 
vegetable, it is now generally recognised that they are composed 
of living material, and of various structures developed from and 
by this material, but that these structures, whilst retaining 
more or less distinct structural evidence of their genetic relation 
to living material, cannot be regarded as themselves alive. Such 
are the walls of cell* cavities or of tubular or filamentous struc- 
tures, &c., in animal and vegetable tissues. These are, no 
doubt, in many cases dependent for their integrity on the presence 
of the living material connected wdth them, but in others they 
may persist for various periods practically unchanged after the 
disappearance of the parent material, and in any case they have 
entirely ceased to exhibit any of the essential characteristics of 
living matter. They are never developed except under the 
influence of living material, but the latter can be developed 
independent of them, and can even persist and thrive for inde- 
finite periods entirely apart from any of them. Changes occurring 
in such structures as the result of insufficient supply of nutritive 
material can only be induced mediately and through the direct 
influence of such deficiency on the living matter. The primary 
object of the experiments in the present instance was, therefore, 
the determination of the effects of insufficient nutritive supply on 
the living material, or, in other w'ords, on the protoplasmic 
constituents of the tissues. 
Professor Huxley long ago defined protoplasm as ^^the 
physical basis of life,^^ and insisted on its general uniformify in 
character in w'hatever group of living beings it may be studied, 
^ “ Dcr Stoffumsatz bei der Pliospborvergiftung,'*’ Von Dr. Jos. Bauer, 
‘ Zeitschrift fiir Biologic,’ Bd. vii, S. 63 — 85. 
