The body : an introduction to physiology / by Ronald Campbell Macfie.

  • Ronald Campbell Macfie
Date:
[1927]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The body : an introduction to physiology / by Ronald Campbell Macfie. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    animal or plant is a summation of the processes occur- ring in the individual cell. The cell is, indeed, the unit of all vital function: each cell is able to assimilate, and grow, and at some time to reproduce itself, and, as in the case of the .amoeba, a single cell may form a complete self- contained organism. Man himself begins as a single cell—the fertilised ovum—but this single cell develops by a process of budding into a great colony or commonwealth of co- operative cells whose activities are marvellously co- ordinated for their mutual advantage. The cell grows, buds, multiplies, mutates. Cell is cunningly plastered to cell and fibre wonderfully interwoven with fibre till there are eyes and mouth and nose, till a little red point becomes a beating heart, till the thing can breathe and digest and walk and talk and think. From one invisible cell has been built and woven the multi- farious tissues and organs of a man. As the cell buds, its progeny of buds varies, and cells of various shapes and kinds come into being and play particular parts in the structure and functions of the body. Over the surface of the body is the mar- vellous tessellated tissue—the skin—forming a rain- proof panoply as soft as silk, yet more durable than armour. The surface of the air-tubes is lined with cubical cells like bricks set on end in close juxta- position, and each cell bears little hair-like appendages, which jut into the tubes and, lashing to and fro, protect the lungs from foreign particles. Over the surface of the brain, again, is a layer of spidery or starry cells—the wonderful cerebral cells, which are the centres of sensation, movement, and thought. Some of these cerebral cells send prolongations, the “ axis cylinders,” down to other cells in the spinal marrow, and these cells in turn send forth prolonga- tions which form nerves of sensation and nutrition and motion. In the blood swarm millions of free cells
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