Page:Cellular pathology as based upon physiological and pathological histology.djvu/38

32 genized membrane of nitrogenized contents differing from it.

It had indeed already long been known, that other things besides existed in the interior of cells, and it was one of the most fruitful of discoveries when Robert Brown detected the nucleus in the vegetable cell. But this body was considered to have a more important share in the formation than in the maintenance of cells, because in very many vegetable cells the nucleus becomes extremely indistinct, and in many altogether disappears, whilst the form of the cell is preserved.

These observations were then applied to the consideration of animal tissues, the correspondence of which with those of vegetables Schwann endeavoured to demonstrate. The interpretation, which we have just mentioned as having been put upon the ordinary forms of vegetable cells, served as the starting-point. In this, however, as after-experience proved, an error was committed. Vegetable cells cannot, viewed in their entirety, be compared with all animal cells. In animal cells, we find no such distinctions between nitrogenized and non-nitrogenized layers; in all the essential constituents of the cells nitrogenized matters are met with. But there are undoubtedly certain forms in the animal body which immediately recall these forms of vegetable cells, and among them there are none so characteristic as the cells of cartilage, which is, in all its features, extremely different from the other tissues of the animal body, and which, especially on account of its non-vascularity, occupies quite a peculiar position. Cartilage in every respect stands in the closest relation to vegetable tissue. In a well-developed cartilage-cell we can distinguish a relatively thick external layer, within which, upon very close inspection, a delicate membrane, contents, and a nucleus are also to be found. Here, there-