A History of Science — Volume 4Williams, Henry Smith
History
A History of Science — Volume 4
Williams, Henry Smith
Science -- History
Schleiden freely acknowledged his indebtedness to Brown for first
knowledge of the nucleus, but he soon carried his studies of that
structure far beyond those of its discoverer. He came to believe that
the nucleus is really the most important portion of the cell, in that
it is the original structure from which the remainder of the cell is
developed. Hence he named it the cytoblast. He outlined his views in
an epochal paper published in Muller's Archives in 1838, under title of
"Beitrage zur Phytogenesis." This paper is in itself of value, yet the
most important outgrowth of Schleiden's observations of the nucleus did
not spring from his own labors, but from those of a friend to whom he
mentioned his discoveries the year previous to their publication.
This friend was Dr. Theodor Schwann, professor of physiology in the
University of Louvain.
At the moment when these observations were communicated to him Schwann
was puzzling over certain details of animal histology which he could
not clearly explain. His great teacher, Johannes Muller, had called
attention to the strange resemblance to vegetable cells shown by certain
cells of the chorda dorsalis (the embryonic cord from which the spinal
column is developed), and Schwann himself had discovered a corresponding
similarity in the branchial cartilage of a tadpole. Then, too, the
researches of Friedrich Henle had shown that the particles that make up
the epidermis of animals are very cell-like in appearance. Indeed, the
cell-like character of certain animal tissues had come to be matter of
common note among students of minute anatomy. Schwann felt that this
similarity could not be mere coincidence, but he had gained no clew to
further insight until Schleiden called his attention to the nucleus.
Then at once he reasoned that if there really is the correspondence
between vegetable and animal tissues that he suspected, and if the
nucleus is so important in the vegetable cell as Schleiden believed,
the nucleus should also be found in the ultimate particles of animal
tissues.
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