82 
Dr. Beale, on Nutrition. 
less, and contains a substance closely allied to the albumen 
of serum, if not identical with it. Different plants and ani- 
mals produce from the very same fluid, and apparently under 
similar conditions, very different substances ; and the different 
kinds of germinal matter in the body of one of the higher 
animals produce formed matters differing widely in structure, 
chemical composition, and properties. 
2nd. That in man and the higher animals the development 
of the tissues corresponds to the period of life when the blood 
is not remarkable for the number or perfection of its red 
blood-corpuscles. 
3rd. That certain morbid growths appear and increase 
rapidly in cases in which the blood has for some time con- 
tained a small proportion of red blood-corpuscles. 
It seems, therefore, probable that the substances taking 
part in the nutrition of all the different textures of the body 
are furnished by the albuminous matter of the serum, and 
that the production of muscle, nerve, fibrous tissue, &c., de- 
pends not so much upon the characters of the pabulum as 
upon the converting powers of the germinal or living matter 
which appropriates this. The substances formed by germinal 
matter depend upon its vital powers and the conditions under 
which these cease to be manifested, rather than upon the 
presence of particular substances in the pabulum itself. Dif- 
ferent kinds of germinal matter have power to rearrange the 
elements of the pabulum suj^plied to them in different ways, 
so that one kind of germinal matter produces muscle, another 
nerve, another fibrous tissue, and so on ; each of these tis- 
sues, and, of course, the pabulum itself, containing oxygen, 
hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon, and some other elements, — but 
combined in a different manner. 
Although the opinion is still entertained by many ana- 
tomists that tissue — as, for example, the intercellular sub- 
stance of cartilage — is deposited directly from the blood, no 
one has explained by what means the composition of the 
pabulum becomes so altered as it passes through the walls of 
the vessels to be distributed between the masses of germinal 
matter. On the other hand, the facts advanced by me several 
years ago in favour of the view that every kind of formed 
material passes through the state or stage of germinal matter 
have not been overthrown. The existence of germinal matter 
before the production of formed material ; the continuity of 
the germinal matter with the formed material in tissues in 
process of development; the circumstance of no case being 
known in which formed material is produced without germinal 
matter ; and the demonstration that fluids will pass through a 
