Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
Jan.,  1890. 
Protoplasm  and  its  History. 
47 
PROTOPLASM  AND  ITS  HISTORY.1 
By  Professor  George  L.  Goodale. 
You  are  invited  to  examine  the  more  recent  additions  to  our  knowledge  of 
protoplasm,  restricting  the  examination  to  discoveries  in  the  field  of  botany. 
The  word  protoplasm  was  coined  by  Hugo  von  Mohl  in  order  to  designate 
certain  active  contents  of  the  vegetable  cell.  We  shall  gain  in  clearness  of 
vision  by  letting  our  glance  rest  first  on  the  results  of  investigating  vegetable 
cells  and  cell  contents,  anterior  to  von  Mohl's  time,  in  order  that  we  may  see 
some  of  the  steps  by  which  this  term  was  reached  by  him.  In  1667,  Robert 
Hooke,  of  England,  published  an  account  of  his  investigations  of  minerals, 
plants  and  animals  under  the  microscope.  His  first  reference  to  the  structure 
of  plants  is  in  his  description  of  charcoal,  and  this  is  followed  by  a  good  account 
of  common  cork.  In  these  brief  and  fairly  accurate  descriptions  the  author 
makes  use  of  the  word  "  cell,"  applying  the  term  to  the  cavities  in  charcoal  and 
in  cork. 
Hooke's  interesting  treatise  was  soon  followed  by  two  remarkable  memoirs — 
one  by  an  Italian,  the  other  by  an  Englishman.  Malpighi,  of  Bologna,  sent  to 
the  Royal  Society  of  London,  in  1670,  a  work  entitled  Anatome  Plantarum. 
At  the  period  these  volumes  were  in  the  hands  of  the  Royal  Society,  Nehemiah 
Grew,  Secretary  of  the  Society,  was  engaged  in  work  almost  identical  with  that 
of  Malpighi.  By  Grew  the  word  "cell"  appears  to  have  been  applied  to  the 
cavities  in  what  we  may  call  the  softer  tissues  of  the  plant.  It  is  certain  that 
neither  Malpighi  nor  Grew  recognized,  as  we  can  now,  the  multifarious  forms 
of  vessels,  fibres,  long  cells  and  the  like  as  referable  to  a  common  source. 
In  1804,  the  Royal  Society  of  Sciences  at  Gottingen  proposed  for  competition 
certain  questions  relative  to  the  structure  and  the  mode  of  growth  of  the  tissues. 
The  chief  contestants  for  this  prize  were  Link,  Rudolphi  and  Treviranus.  The 
memoirs  of  the  first  two  received  the  prize,  that  of  the  latter  honorable  mention. 
.The  names  of  others  should  be  referred  to  as  having  worked  at  or  about  this 
time  in  the  same  field,  namely  :  Bernhardi,  Mirbel  and  Moldenhauer,  the  latter 
making  a  great  advance  in  certain  directions.  But  to  all  of  these  whom  I  have 
mentioned,  including  the  winners  of  the  prize,  the  important  question  seems 
to  be,  how  are  the  structural  elements  distributed,  rather  than  how  they  are 
related  to  each  other  in  manner  of  growth  and  as  respects  their  origin.  With 
the  cell  contents  they  had  comparatively  little  to  do.  They  were  busy  with 
the  constituents  of  the  frame-work. 
Noting  the  more  important  discoveries  of  the  next  period  in  their  order,  we 
come  first  upon  that  of  the  nucleus  of  vegetable  cells  by  Robert  Brown  in  1833 
and  one  mode  of  cell  division  by  Mohl  in  1835.  In  1838,  the  eccentric  Schlei- 
den  published  his  Contributions  to  Phytogenesis,  in  which  he  states  substan- 
tially that  cells  of  plants  can  be  formed  only  in  a  fluid  containing,  as  chief 
ingredients,  sugar  and  mucus  (Schleim).  By  this  latter  term  he  designated  the 
nitrogenous  matters  taken  collectively  and  for  the  first  time  the  vegetable  cell 
was  distinctly  recognized  as  a  unit  of  structure  always  serving  as  the  common 
basis  for  the  formation  of  the  innumerable  shapes  of  the  structural  elements. 
i  From  an  address  delivered  by  Prof.  George  L.  Goodale,  of  Harvard  University,  as 
Vice-President  of  the  Biological  Section  of  the  A.  A.  A.  S.,  at  Toronto,  Ang.  28,  1889; 
abstracted  and  condensed  from  the  "  Botanical  Gazette"  by  G.  M.  Beringer. 
