Page:Cellular pathology as based upon physiological and pathological histology.djvu/37

Rh cording to circumstances, may be deposited, e. g. fat, starch, pigment, albumen (cell-contents). But also, quite independently of these local varieties in the contents, we are enabled, by means of chemical investigation, to detect the presence of several different substances in the essential constituents of the cells.

The substance which forms the external membrane, and is known under the name of cellulose, is generally found to be destitute of nitrogen, and yields, on the addition of iodine and sulphuric acid, a peculiar, very characteristic, beautiful blue tint. Iodine alone produces no colour; sulphuric acid by itself chars. The contents of simple cells, on the other hand, do not turn blue ; when the cell is quite a simple one, there appears, on the contrary, after the addition of iodine and sulphuric acid, a brownish or yellowish mass, isolated in the interior of the cell-cavity as a special body (protoplasma), around which can be recognised a special, plicated, frequently shrivelled membrane (primordial utricle) (fig. 1, c). Even rough chemical analysis generally detects in the simplest cells, in addition to the non-nitrogenized (external) substance, a nitrogenized internal mass; and vegetable physiology seems, therefore, to have been justified in concluding, that what really constitutes a cell is the presence within a non-nitro-

Fig. 1. Vegetable cells from the centre of the young shoot of a tuber of Solarium tuberosum. a. The ordinary appearance of the regularly polygonal, thick-walled cellular tissue, b. An isolated cell with finely granular-looking cavity, in which a nucleus with nucleolus is to be seen. c. The same cell after the addition of water; the contents (protoplasma) have receded from the wall (membrane, capsule). Investing them a peculiar, delicate membrane (primordial utricle) has become visible, d. The same cell after a more lengthened exposure to the action of water; the interior cell (protoplasma with the primordial utricle and nucleus) has become quite contracted, and remains attached to the cell-wall (capsule) merely by the means of fine, some of them branching, threads.