Page:Cellular pathology as based upon physiological and pathological histology.djvu/47

CELL-TERRITORIES AND INTERCELLULAR SUBSTANCE. 41 animals a peculiarity which in vegetables is scarcely at all to be witnessed, namely, the development of large masses of so-called intercellular substance. Whilst vegetable cells are usually in immediate contact with one another by their external secreted layers, although in such a manner that the old boundaries can still always

be distinguished, we find in animal tissues that this species of arrangement is the more rare one. In the often very abundant mass of matter which lies between the cells {intermediate, intercellular substance), we are seldom able to perceive at a glance, how far a given part of it belongs to one or another cell ; it presents the aspect of a homogeneous intermediate substance. According to Schwann, the intercellular substance was the cytoblastema, destined for the development of new cells. This I do not consider to be correct, but, on the contrary, I have, by means of a series of pathological observations, arrived at the conclusion that the intercellular substance is dependent in a certain definite manner upon the cells, and that it is necessary to draw bounda-

Fig. 6. Cartilage from the epiphysis of the lower end of the humerus of a child. The object was treated first with chromate of potash, and then with acetic acid. In the homogeneous mass (intercellular substance) are seen, at a, cartilage-cavities (Knorpelhohlen) with walls still thin (capsules), from which the cartilage-cells, provided with a nucleus and nucleolus, are separated by a distinct limiting membrane. b. Capsules (cavities) with two cells produced by the division of previously simple ones. e. Division of the capsules following the division of the cells, d. Separation of the divided capsules by the deposition between them of intercellular substance — Growth of cartilage.