Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Souvenir. 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.
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![tion of the enamel, and the organ which forms it, and have seen it illustrated by those beautiful photo-micrographs. It is formed from within outward, and the organ from which it has derived its nutri- tion has disappeared. The life-process has built this enamel,—laid it down there; and old Dame Nature, life, has stepped backward on tiptoe and gone off and left it, as a good mother would do with her sleeping child for fear of waking it; but, unlike the good mother, has never returned. Dr. William H. Atkinson. I rejoice at the excellence of the va- rious pronouncements] that we have had before us to-night. I am happy in the growth that has been manifested, and I wish to bid God speed to each one who has spoken, in his effort to present the truth as it appears to him. Would that we were all large enough to enjoy the presentments and conclusions of our fellows, and not attempt to assert a domination over them. It would take hours to go through all that has been presented before us in an effort to harmonize the differences, albeit we are brothers, each seeking to give the highest expression to his apprehensions and interpretations. We should accord to every man the same liberty of interpretation of what he sees that we feel entitled to ourselves. The enamel-rod as here represented is to each individual truthful according as he sees it; but, if his attention has always been directed to one par- ticular aspect, he is not likely to see so distinctly other aspects of it, and his ideas will depend on what he sees, and not upon all that is before him, and so his interpretation will be based upon what he supposed he had seen. My good brother Black still sees that which leads him to retain the old, mouldy interpretation of the effete cell- doctrine as to the primal steps in organization. Gentlemen,[you had all better go to Carl Heitzmann's laboratory and get the true inter- pretation. You can see in Eichard Owen's work a delineation of Max Schultz's thorns, because Owon's workmen cut sections and made drawings and engravings that properly represented the struc- ture of the teeth, but for lack of discrimination Owen failed to describe in the text that which his pupils clearly delineated. What is that red line in the drawing? It is the representation of the fibril in partial view. The trouble with my brethren here to-night is that they have confined their attention to that portion of the presentment which met their vision. If the other part had been called to their atten- tion they would have seen it. They said they were fibrils. Carl Heitzmann and I have had some combats with regard to what proto. plasm is. I tell him these are nothing but little sacs of organized material holding a fluid substance differing in degree of life-endow- ment. He says the fibrils are living matter, and the intermediate](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21230237_0078.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
