A History of Science, vol 4 by Henry Smith Williams (best novels to read for beginners txt) 📖
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and animal tissues and the cellular nature of the ultimate
constitution of both was supported by a mass of carefully
gathered evidence which a multitude of microscopists at once
confirmed, so Schwann’s work became a classic almost from the
moment of its publication. Of course various other workers at
once disputed Schwann’s claim to priority of discovery, in
particular the English microscopist Valentin, who asserted, not
without some show of justice, that he was working closely along
the same lines. Put so, for that matter, were numerous others,
as Henle, Turpin, Du-mortier, Purkinje, and Muller, all of whom
Schwann himself had quoted. Moreover, there were various
physiologists who earlier than any of these had foreshadowed the
cell theory—notably Kaspar Friedrich Wolff, towards the close of
the previous century, and Treviranus about 1807, But, as we have
seen in so many other departments of science, it is one thing to
foreshadow a discovery, it is quite another to give it full
expression and make it germinal of other discoveries. And when
Schwann put forward the explicit claim that “there is one
universal principle of development for the elementary parts, of
organisms, however different, and this principle is the formation
of cells,” he enunciated a doctrine which was for all practical
purposes absolutely new and opened up a novel field for the
microscopist to enter. A most important era in physiology dates
from the publication of his book in 1839.
THE CELL THEORY ELABORATEDThat Schwann should have gone to embryonic tissues for the
establishment of his ideas was no doubt due very largely to the
influence of the great Russian Karl Ernst von Baer, who about ten
years earlier had published the first part of his celebrated work
on embryology, and whose ideas were rapidly gaining ground,
thanks largely to the advocacy of a few men, notably Johannes
Muller, in Germany, and William B. Carpenter, in England, and to
the fact that the improved microscope had made minute anatomy
popular. Schwann’s researches made it plain that the best field
for the study of the animal cell is here, and a host of explorers
entered the field. The result of their observations was, in the
main, to confirm the claims of Schwann as to the universal
prevalence of the cell. The long-current idea that animal tissues
grow only as a sort of deposit from the blood-vessels was now
discarded, and the fact of so-called plantlike growth of animal
cells, for which Schwann contended, was universally accepted. Yet
the full measure of the affinity between the two classes of cells
was not for some time generally apprehended.
Indeed, since the substance that composes the cell walls of
plants is manifestly very different from the limiting membrane of
the animal cell, it was natural, so long as the, wall was
considered the most essential part of the structure, that the
divergence between the two classes of cells should seem very
pronounced. And for a time this was the conception of the matter
that was uniformly accepted. But as time went on many observers
had their attention called to the peculiar characteristics of the
contents of the cell, and were led to ask themselves whether
these might not be more important than had been supposed. In
particular, Dr. Hugo von Mohl, professor of botany in the
University of Tubingen, in the course of his exhaustive studies
of the vegetable cell, was impressed with the peculiar and
characteristic appearance of the cell contents. He observed
universally within the cell “an opaque, viscid fluid, having
granules intermingled in it,” which made up the main substance of
the cell, and which particularly impressed him because under
certain conditions it could be seen to be actively in motion, its
parts separated into filamentous streams.
Von Mohl called attention to the fact that this motion of the
cell contents had been observed as long ago as 1774 by
Bonaventura Corti, and rediscovered in 1807 by Treviranus, and
that these observers had described the phenomenon under the “most
unsuitable name of ‘rotation of the cell sap.’ Von Mohl
recognized that the streaming substance was something quite
different from sap. He asserted that the nucleus of the cell lies
within this substance and not attached to the cell wall as
Schleiden had contended. He saw, too, that the chlorophyl
granules, and all other of the cell contents, are incorporated
with the “opaque, viscid fluid,” and in 1846 he had become so
impressed with the importance of this universal cell substance
that be gave it the name of protoplasm. Yet in so doing he had no
intention of subordinating the cell wall. The fact that Payen, in
1844, had demonstrated that the cell walls of all vegetables,
high or low, are composed largely of one substance, cellulose,
tended to strengthen the position of the cell wall as the really
essential structure, of which the protoplasmic contents were only
subsidiary products.
Meantime, however, the students of animal histology were more and
more impressed with the seeming preponderance of cell contents
over cell walls in the tissues they studied. They, too, found
the cell to be filled with a viscid, slimy fluid capable of
motion. To this Dujardin gave the name of sarcode. Presently it
came to be known, through the labors of Kolliker, Nageli,
Bischoff, and various others, that there are numerous lower forms
of animal life which seem to be composed of this sarcode, without
any cell wall whatever. The same thing seemed to be true of
certain cells of higher organisms, as the blood corpuscles.
Particularly in the case of cells that change their shape
markedly, moving about in consequence of the streaming of their
sarcode, did it seem certain that no cell wall is present, or
that, if present, its role must be insignificant.
And so histologists came to question whether, after all, the cell
contents rather than the enclosing wall must not be the really
essential structure, and the weight of increasing observations
finally left no escape from the conclusion that such is really
the case. But attention being thus focalized on the cell
contents, it was at once apparent that there is a far closer
similarity between the ultimate particles of vegetables and those
of animals than had been supposed. Cellulose and animal membrane
being now regarded as more by-products, the way was clear for the
recognition of the fact that vegetable protoplasm and animal
sarcode are marvellously similar in appearance and general
properties. The closer the observation the more striking seemed
this similarity; and finally, about 1860, it was demonstrated by
Heinrich de Bary and by Max Schultze that the two are to all
intents and purposes identical. Even earlier Remak had reached a
similar conclusion, and applied Von Mohl’s word protoplasm to
animal cell contents, and now this application soon became
universal. Thenceforth this protoplasm was to assume the utmost
importance in the physiological world, being recognized as the
universal “physical basis of life,” vegetable and animal alike.
This amounted to the logical extension and culmination of
Schwann’s doctrine as to the similarity of development of the two
animate kingdoms. Yet at the, same time it was in effect the
banishment of the cell that Schwann had defined. The word cell
was retained, it is true, but it no longer signified a minute
cavity. It now implied, as Schultze defined it, “a small mass of
protoplasm endowed with the attributes of life.” This definition
was destined presently to meet with yet another modification, as
we shall see; but the conception of the protoplasmic mass as the
essential ultimate structure, which might or might not surround
itself with a protective covering, was a permanent addition to
physiological knowledge. The earlier idea had, in effect,
declared the shell the most important part of the egg; this
developed view assigned to the yolk its true position.
In one other important regard the theory of Schleiden and Schwann
now became modified. This referred to the origin of the cell.
Schwann had regarded cell growth as a kind of crystallization,
beginning with the deposit of a nucleus about a granule in the
intercellular substance—the cytoblastema, as Schleiden called
it. But Von Mohl, as early as 1835, had called attention to the
formation of new vegetable cells through the division of a
pre-existing cell. Ehrenberg, another high authority of the time,
contended that no such division occurs, and the matter was still
in dispute when Schleiden came forward with his discovery of
so-called free cell-formation within the parent cell, and this
for a long time diverted attention from the process of division
which Von Mohl had described. All manner of schemes of
cell-formation were put forward during the ensuing years by a
multitude of observers, and gained currency notwithstanding Von
Mohl’s reiterated contention that there are really but two ways
in which the formation of new cells takes place—namely, “first,
through division of older cells; secondly, through the formation
of secondary cells lying free in the cavity of a cell.”
But gradually the researches of such accurate observers as Unger,
Nageli, Kolliker, Reichart, and Remak tended to confirm the
opinion of Von Mohl that cells spring only from cells, and
finally Rudolf Virchow brought the matter to demonstration about
1860. His Omnis cellula e cellula became from that time one of
the accepted data of physiology. This was supplemented a little
later by Fleming’s Omnis nucleus e nucleo, when still more
refined methods of observation had shown that the part of the
cell which always first undergoes change preparatory to new
cell-formation is the all-essential nucleus. Thus the nucleus was
restored to the important position which Schwann and Schleiden
had given it, but with greatly altered significance. Instead of
being a structure generated de novo from non-cellular substance,
and disappearing as soon as its function of cell-formation was
accomplished, the nucleus was now known as the central and
permanent feature of every cell, indestructible while the cell
lives, itself the division-product of a pre-existing nucleus, and
the parent, by division of its substance, of other generations of
nuclei. The word cell received a final definition as “a small
mass of protoplasm supplied with a nucleus.”
In this widened and culminating general view of the cell theory
it became clear that every animate organism, animal or vegetable,
is but a cluster of nucleated cells, all of which, in each
individual case, are the direct descendants of a single
primordial cell of the ovum. In the developed individuals of
higher organisms the successive generations of cells become
marvellously diversified in form and in specific functions; there
is a wonderful division of labor, special functions being chiefly
relegated to definite groups of cells; but from first to last
there is no function developed that is not present, in a
primitive way, in every cell, however isolated; nor does the
developed cell, however specialized, ever forget altogether any
one of its primordial functions or capacities. All physiology,
then, properly interpreted, becomes merely a study of cellular
activities; and the development of the cell theory takes its
place as the great central generalization in physiology of the
nineteenth century. Something of the later developments of this
theory we shall see in another connection.
ANIMAL CHEMISTRYJust at the time when the microscope was opening up the paths
that were to lead to the wonderful cell theory, another novel
line of interrogation of the living organism was being put
forward by a different set of observers. Two great schools of
physiological chemistry had arisen—one under guidance of Liebig
and Wohler, in Germany, the other dominated by the great French
master Jean Baptiste Dumas. Liebig had at one time contemplated
the study of medicine, and Dumas had achieved distinction in
connection with Prevost, at Geneva, in the field of pure
physiology before he turned his attention especially to
chemistry. Both these masters, therefore, and Wohler as well,
found absorbing interest in those phases of chemistry that
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