Microscopical morphology of the animal body in health and disease / by C. Heitzmann. With 380 original engravings.
- Carl Heitzmann
- Date:
- 1883
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Microscopical morphology of the animal body in health and disease / by C. Heitzmann. With 380 original engravings. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.
83/884 page 57
![1U:VKL()PMK}<T OF LI VIS (J MAlTKli. 7)1 fluid, while tlie liviiif^ matter of the tissues exists mainly in the reticular stajife, and is intereonneetcd without iut('rru])ti()n throuj^lumt the l)ody. The question arises, are we justified in speakiujy^ of cells as the formative elements of jilants ? The li\4n^' matter of plants is not nuiterially different from that of animals, so far as its appear- ance is concerned. W. Kuehne discovered vegetable lumps of protoplasm exhibiting amoeboid motion and locomotion, almost identical with that ()f ama^bji?. In fresh tissues of plants the liv- ing nuitter was for a long time known to 1)6 endowed with motion, as the granules were seen by E. Brlicke and others, floating briskly in a liquid. My own limited researches enable me to assert that the gi-anides of living matter in vegetable protoplasm are, as a rule, united in the shape of a reticulum in the same manner as in animal protoplasm. Besides, the researches of W. Hassloch (see page 40) elucidate the identity of both animal and vegetable liv- ing matter in a satisfactory manner. I may add that all cells of the vegetable organism are uninterruptedly connected by means of delicate offshoots, piercing the walls of the cellulose. The gi'anules of amylum are transformed living vegetable matter. The plant in tofo is an individual, and not composed of indi- vidual cells. The present generation of histologists will very probably never realize the harm done by the misnomer cell, so tirmly established diu-ing the last forty years. Nevertheless, I shall make an attempt to replace former misnomers by new words and terms, the originator of which is L. Elsberg.* He says : The formerly unquestioned cell views of histologists are giving way to a more correct appreciation of tlie li\'ing matter of the body. In pathology, as in physiology, the cell doctrine has led to great advances in accurate knowledge as an aid and means of research, but it has outlived its useful- ness. Instead of adhering to Virchow's comparison, that every higher organ- ism is like an organized social community or state, in which the individual citizens are represented by the cells, each ha\ang a certain morphological and physiological autonomy, although, on the other hand, interdependent and subject to the laws of the whole, we now compare the body to a machine in which, though there are single parts, these are materially connected to- gether, and no part is at all autonomous, but all combine to make up one individual. According to the former view, the body is composed of colonies of amoebae; according to the latter, the body is composed of one complex *Xotife of the Bioplasson Doctrine. Transactions of the American Medical Association, 1875. Contrihutions to the Normal and Pathological Histologj- of the Cartilages of the Larj-nx. Arcliives of Laryngologry, 1882.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21219163_0083.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
