Page:Cellular pathology as based upon physiological and pathological histology.djvu/44

38 the red blood-cells no longer exhibit all the characteristics of a cell, but have lost an important constituent in their composition. But we are also all agreed upon this point, that the blood is one of those changeable constituents of the body, whose cellular elements possess no durability, and with regard to which everybody assumes that they perish, and are replaced by new ones, which in their turn are doomed to annihilation, and everywhere (like the uppermost cells in the cuticle, in which we also can discover no nuclei, as soon as they begin to desquamate) have already reached a stage in their development, when they no longer require that durability in their more intimate composition for which we must regard the nucleus as the guarantee.

On the other hand, notwithstanding the manifold investigations to which the tissues are at present subjected, we are acquainted with no part which grows or multiplies, either in a physiological or pathological manner, in which nucleated elements cannot invariably be demonstrated as the starting-points of the change, and in which the first decisive alterations which display themselves, do not involve the nucleus itself, so that we often can determine from its condition what would possibly have become of the elements.

You see from this description that, at least, two different things are of necessity required for the composition of a cellular element; the membrane, whether round, jagged or stellate, and the nucleus, which from the outset differs in chemical constitution from the membrane. Herewith, however, we are far from having enumerated all the essential constituents of the cell, for, in addition to the nucleus, it is filled with a relatively greater or less quantity of contents, as is likewise commonly, it seems, the nucleus itself, the contents of which are also wont to differ from those of the