Page:Defensive Ferments of the Animal Organism (3rd edition).djvu/54

 radical reconstruction could make them harmonious therewith.

That, in an animal organism, the formation of material for definite cells can be effected by the components of absolutely different cells, we can learn from experiments on the starvation of animals, and particularly from the well-known observations made by the Basle physiologist, Friedrich Miescher, on salmon. This observer was able to prove that the sexual glands of this fish become extraordinarily developed in fresh water at the expense of the muscles. It can be demonstrated microscopically that the components of the muscle tissues are gradually decomposed until they pass into the blood circulation; and Miescher speaks quite plainly of a liquidation of the units of the muscle cells. At the same time it may be observed that the sexual glands gradually begin to grow, without the animal taking anv nourishment. But in the cells of the sexual glands we do not meet with the specific muscular constituents in an unmodified state; on the contrary, we meet with quite new substances, chiefly albumens in a state in which they are never met with in the muscle cells. We notice in this case that histones appear in place of the muscle albumens. These are albuminous bodies of a basic nature, containing the so-called di-amino-acids in large quantities. Soon we find the histones, the more the sexual organs, and