Page:Microscopicial researchers - Theodor Schwann - English Translation - 1947.pdf/225

THEORY OF THE CELLS. 199 contents of the cell are different from those which are produced by change in the external cytoblastema. What is the cause of this difference, if the metamorphosing power of the cell- membrane be limited to its immediate neighbourhood merely? Might we not much rather expect that converted substances would be found without distinction on the inner as on the outer surface of the cell-membrane? It might be said that the cell-membrane converts the substance in contact with it without distinction, and that the variety in the products of this conversion depends only upon a difference between the convertible substance contained in the cell and the external cytoblastema. But the question then arises, as to how it happens that the contents of the cell differ from the external cytoblastema. If it be true that the cell-membrane, which at first closely surrounds the nucleus, expands in the course of its growth, so as to leave an interspace between it and the cell, and that the contents of the cell consist of fluid which has entered this space merely by imbibition, they cannot differ essentially from the external cytoblastema. I think therefore that, in order to explain the distinction between the cell-contents and the external cytoblastema, we must ascribe to the cell-membrane not only the power in general of chemically altering the substances which it is either in contact with, or has imbibed, but also of so separating them that certain substances appear on its inner, and others on its outer surface. The secretion of substances already present in the blood, as, for instance, of urea, by the cells with which the urinary tubes are lined, cannot be explained without such a faculty of the cells. There is, however, nothing so very hazardous in it, since it is a fact that different substances are separated in the decompositions produced by the galvanic pile. It might perhaps be conjectured from this peculiarity of the metabolic phenomena in the cells, that a particular position of the axes of the atoms composing the cell-membrane is essential for the production of these appearances.

Chemical changes occur, however, not only in the cytoblastema and the cell-contents, but also in the solid parts of which the cells are composed, particularly the cell-membrane. Without wishing to assert that there is any intimate connexion between the metabolic power of the cells and galvanism, I may yet, for the sake of making the representation of the process