Any one of the higher animals or plants admits of analysis into
_organs_, each adapted to one or more functions. Bichât (1801) showed
that the body of one of the higher animals is not only a collection
of organs, but also a collection of _tissues_, and the same is true
of the higher plants. Analysis of the organism was carried a step
further when in 1838-9 Schleiden and Schwann announced that all the
higher animals and plants are made up of _cells_, which were at first
supposed to consist in every case of a cell-wall, fluid contents, and
a nucleus.[38] It was soon discovered that the cell-wall is as often
absent as present, and that the cell-contents are not simply fluid; the
nucleus is still believed to be universal. Schwann proved that nails,
feathers, and tooth-enamel, though not obviously cellular, consist of
nothing but cells, and it was afterwards shown that bone, cartilage,
fatty tissue, and fibrous tissue arise by the activity of cells which
disappear from view in the abundance of their formed products. The
individual cells of a complex organism are usually themselves alive;
sometimes, as in ciliated epithelium, they give indications of life
longafter they have been separated from the body. The preponderating
importance of the transparent jelly or protoplasm became clear when
it was recognised that this alone is invariably present, and that
this alone responds to stimuli. The nucleus is believed to be only a
specialised part of the cell-protoplasm.
The cell-theory, like nearly every theory, was neither altogether new
nor in its first form altogether complete. Before 1838 cell-division,
as we should now call it, had been indistinctly seen to be the process
by which the body of one of the higher animals is built up. Leeuwenhoek
and Swammerdam had found a wholly cellular stage in frog-embryos (see
p. 103), while Prévost and Dumas in 1824 had in effect discovered that
the cells of which such embryos consist result from repeated division
of an egg; Mohl in 1835 observed the actual division. Even Schwann,
however, was not acquainted with the important fact that every cell
arises by the division of a pre-existing cell.
Swarm-spores of algæ showed that protoplasm, when unenclosed in a
cell-wall, can move about, direct its course, and change its shape.
Knowledge of this fact did more than rectify the definition of the
cell; it effaced one distinction between plants and animals, and gave a
hint of the resemblance of primitive cells to such simple organisms as
Amœba.
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