Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 61.djvu/568

562 I was struck by the fact that keratitis and corneal wounds healed without the appearance of plastic exudation, and I was thus led to study the process of inflammation in other nonvascular structures, such as articular cartilages and the intima of the larger vessels. In no one of these cases was plastic exudation found, but in all of them were changes in the tissue cells. Turning next to vascular organs, and in particular those which are the common seats of exudation processes, I succeeded in demonstrating that' the presence of cells in inflammatory exudates was not the result of exudation, but of multiplication of preexisting cells. Extending this to the growth in thickness of the long bones—which was ascribed by Duhamel to organization of a nutritious juice exuded by the periosteal vessels—I was thus eventually able to extend the biological doctrine of omnis cellula e cellula to pathological processes as well; every new formation presupposing a matrix from which its cells arise and the stamp of which they bear.

Herein also lies the key to the mystery of heredity. The humoral theory attributed this to the blood, and based the most fantastic ideas upon this hypothesis. We know now that the cells are the factors of the inherited properties, the sources of the germs of new tissues and the motive power of vital action. It must not, however, be supposed that all the problems of heredity have thus been solved. Thus, for instance, a general explanation of theromorphism, or the appearance of variations recalling the lower animals, is still to be found. Each case must be studied on its merit, and an endeavor made to discover whether it arose by atavism or by hereditary transmission of an acquired condition. As to the occurrence of the latter mode of origin, I can express myself positively. Equally difficult is the question of hereditary diseases; this is now generally assumed to depend on the transmission of a predisposition which is present, though not recognizable, in the earliest cells, being derived from the parental or maternal tissues. But the most elaborately constructed doctrines as to the hereditariness of a given disorder may break down before the discovery of an actual causa viva. A notable example of this is found in the case of leprosy, the transmission of which by inheritance was at one time so firmly believed in that thirty years ago a law was nearly passed in Norway forbidding the marriage of members of leprous families. I myself, however, found that a certain number of cases at any rate did not arise in this way, and my results were confirmed by the discovery of the leprous bacillus by Armauer Hansen. In a moment the hereditary theory of the disease was overthrown and the old view of its acquirement by contagion restored. Precisely the same happened a few decades earlier with regard to favus and scabies. Another instructive