166 
Chance's translation of Virchow, that terminates with the ’word ‘ cell- 
territory’ (zellen-territorien), he cannot fail to see the close following or 
copying of Goodsir. Virchow, however, makes no reference to the source 
from which he has obtained his cell-territory. 1 
“ Various opinions on the nature of the cell have passed current during 
the last thirty years, and almost each quinquenniad has had a theory of 
its own. Thus Schwann looked upon the vitelline membrane as the outer 
cell-wall, the yelk substance the contents, the germinal vesicle the nucleus, 
and the macula or macula the nucleolus or nucleoli. Wagner and Henle 
regarded the germinal vesicle as the true cell, and the other parts of the 
ovum as of the nature of superadded structures. Goodsir and Virchow 
held the cell to be the ultimate morphological element in which there is 
any manifestation of life, and that the seat of real action must not be 
transferred to any point beyond the cell. Still finer distinctions have 
been drawn of late years, and much said on 4 plasms ’ and 4 protoplasms ’ 
or 4 plasmodiums ’ as rivals of the cell. The observations of the eminent 
phytologist Hugo Von Mohl on the 4 Primordial Utricle,’ Cienkowsky’s 
views on the monads, espoused by Professor Huxley in his lectures on the 
Invertebrata, and Professor Haeckel’s 4 Protogenes,’ may be cited in proof 
of the opinions afloat and pertaining to the ultimate atoms of organized 
bodies. The protogenes of the Jena professor is described as 4 simply a 
minute drop of living jelly, simpler even than a white blood-corpuscle, 
having no nucleus, no nucleolus, no contracting vesicle — 44 no nothing ” 
in fact, except the property of flowing in various directions, and of pro- 
truding innumerable fine processes or pseudopodia.’ Here is a living 
substance devoid of all but molecular structure, yet showing by its pseu- 
dopodia the actions attributed to the lower forms of animal life — ex. gr. 
the Amoeba. The question will now arise, If Haeckel’s views be admitted, is 
plasm endowed with a formative and selective power in the building up 
and the disintegration and decay of organisms ? Has science revealed a 
potential or pantheistic force— the universal Archeus — pervading every 
form of organized matter ? Is it to be inferred that life is originally 
stamped on the amorphous and elementary molecule, that the molecule 
is advanced to a distinct and tangible organization in the cell as in the 
amorphozoa — the perfection of tissue being a further process of the cell 
in its entirety — anatomical and physiological? However this may be — 
and all that pertains to molecular morphology 2 is likely to undergo a 
thorough inquiry — Dr. Macvicar and others have space and verge enough 
in determining the intricate philosophy of matter. In all speculations 
resting on molecular and cellular growth it may be well to remember 
that the dogma of to-day may come to rank with the disbelief of tomorrow, 
or even be classified with an antediluvian past ; and it is not less neces- 
sary to keep in view what history has oft recorded and repeated, but in 
vain, that the eccentricities of one age may become the wisdom of the 
next.” 
With the memoirs which are the production of John 
1 “This question was fully discussed in the ‘British Medical Journal’ 
(Jan. 12, 1861), in a leading article — ‘Cellular Pathology, its Present 
Position’- — being a review of Virchow’s work as translated by Chance 
The passages referred to in the text above are placed in parallel columns. 
2 44 A Sketch of a Philosophy — Part II. — Matter and Molecular Morpho- 
logy,” published by Williams and Norgate, 1868, will furnish abundant 
materials to those interested in these inquiries. The chemical or elementary 
synthesis, rather than the anatomical and physiological relations of molecules, 
are discussed iy this remarkable brochure. 
