Page:Cellular pathology as based upon physiological and pathological histology.djvu/40

34 body essentially of a nitrogenous nature, and, on the whole, similar in composition. The so-called membrane of the vegetable cell is only met with in a few animal issues, as, for example, in cartilage; the ordinary membrane of the animal cell corresponds, as I showed as far back as 1847, to the primordial utricle of the vegetable cell. It is only when we adhere to this view of the matter, when we separate from the cell all that has been added to it by an after-development, that we obtain a simple, homogeneous, extremely monotonous structure, recurring with extraordinary constancy in living organisms. But just this very constancy forms the best criteterion of our having before us in this structure one of those really elementary bodies, to be built up of which is eminently characteristic of every living thing — without the pre-existence of which no living forms arise, and to which the continuance and the maintenance of life is intimately attached. Only since our idea of a cell has assumed this severe form—and I am somewhat proud of having always, in spite of the reproach of pedantry, firmly adhered to it—only since that time can it be said that a simple form has been obtained which we can everywhere again expect to find, and which, though different in size and external shape, is yet always identical in its essential constituents.

In such a simple cell we can distinguish dissimilar constituents, and it is important that we should accurately define their nature also.

In the first place, we expect to find a nucleus within the cell; and with regard to this nucleus, which has usually a round or oval form, we know that, particularly in the case of young cells, it offers greater resistance to the action of chemical agents than do the external parts of the cell, and that, in spite of the greatest variations in the external form of the cell, it generally maintains its