164 
“ Like all the early observers of ‘ the cell,’ Dr. Goodsir met with diffi- 
culties. Granted a cell, with its walls, its contents, its nucleus and 
nucleolus, what then ? Did the formation of cells depend on an endo- 
genous or exogenous growth, a fissiparous division, or a gemmiferous 
thrusting forth of new cells or materials? Theory often ran in advance 
of observation, and Goodsir, too anxious for a foremost place in the race 
of competition, went boldly onwards; for, with too many of that period, 
instead of comparing microscopic observation with the data furnished by 
the test-tube and the philosophical balance, the desire was to be able to cry 
* Eureka !’ before your neighbour. This mode of procedure could excite 
no surprise ; histology was an almost untrodden field, the explorers of 
which were enthusiastic and impressionable. The new developmental 
anatomy attracted dilettanti and idealists, as well as the legitimists in 
science, and came to be viewed in the highest light as an Archimedean 
lever to the biological world — a consummation devoutly to be wished by 
the physicist, physiologist, and positivist, all of whom took part in the 
discussion of a subject that seemed specially to concern the anatomist 
alone. The geometrician saw the fundamental form of nature repre- 
sented in the cell — a hollow spheroid or ellipsoid ; the physiologist would 
have it that all the processes engaged in the vital functions rest upon a 
combination, recombination, or multiplication of cells ; and Comte, rising 
with his philosophy still higher, found in the life of the single cell a type 
and the source of not only the functions of individual man, but also of the 
grand etre — humanity. Even the lover of the aesthetical, struck by the 
histological elements, both in their origin and coalesced functions, glorified 
them into a form of beauty charmingly consonant with bis beau ideal of 
life, and his higher aspirations towards the primitive ajsthetic standard. 
Goodsir, no less speculative than scientific, was not the least conspicuous 
supporter of the new doctrines that bid lair, at one time, to make the cell 
the whole science of life. 
“ Of the lectures delivered in the theatre of the Royal College of 
Surgeons in the summer of 1842 and winter of 1842-43, a portion was 
devoted to the consideration of practical subjects — ex. gr. surgical patho- 
logy ; another portion embraced anatomical and physiological questions of 
current or rather special interest to the younger members of his audience, 
and were afterwards woven into a work — ‘Anatomical and Pathological 
Observations,’ (vide vol. ii, p. 387). The prominent doctrines enunciated 
by Goodsir in these lectures mainly rested on the existence of centres of 
force connected with the nutritive and reproductive changes in the normal 
and pathological processes. The term ‘centres of nutrition,’ or ‘germinal 
centres,’ as employed by him, obviously possessed a similar signification 
to that which at this time is attached by Dr. Beale to his ‘germinal 
matter,’ and by various anatomists of the most modern German school to 
their masses of nucleated protoplasm. The allocation to these definite 
‘centres,’ not only of the forces engaged in the nutrition of the textures, 
but in tbe reproduction of new forms both in normal and pathological 
processes — a doctrine which has been in its special relations to pathology 
so systematically pursued by Virchow and his disciples — was unmistak- 
ably present in t he mind of Goodsir, and also articulately expressed in the 
pathological papers in the series now referred to. This, it must be remem- 
bered, was at a period when the origin of new cell-forms by a process of 
precipitation, or molecular aggregation in a fluid blastema or exudation, 
was the doctrine prevalent in the schools. 
“ Of the part which the nucleated cell plays in the processes of nutri- 
tion, secretion, and reproduction, normal and otherwise, it may perhaps 
suffice to refer the reader to the paper on ‘ Centres of Nutrition,’ to that 
