Page:Transactions of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, volume 1.djvu/140

112 fessor Schulze, Schaudinn found a guide who appreciated and loved his brilliant pupil, and who knew well how to direct his work; and he had at his disposal the resources of a thoroughly up-to-date laboratory. Here he worked enthusiastically, as student and assistant director of studies, from 1890 to 1894; here he acquired his unparalleled skill of technique; and here he developed his extraordinary gift of interpretation. In the latter year he graduated, selecting as a subject for his thesis the life- history of the Foraminifera. He was able, to describe many new species, but it was with the relations of the nucleus to the development and morphology of cellular protoplasm that his attention had been chiefly occupied. Although Dimorphism had long been known as a characteristic of Radiolarian life, it was Schaudinn's work at this early period that explained its dependence on nuclear influences, and called attention to their importance and significance. The views which he then formed as to the role of the nucleus proved, indeed, to be the keynote of his future work; and though not fully elaborated until several years later, they are the text of the sermon which he preached throughout his life. Briefly, these views were that in the nucleus of the protozoan cell there are two antagonistic elements—the one somatic, the other reproductive—and that the predominance of either is the characteristic and determinant of differing sex. In a male cell, the somatic or blepharoplastic element is developed at the expense of the female, which atrophies. In a female cell, the reproductive element develops at the expense of the somatic. In sexual fecundation there is a double fusion of antagonistic elements, with the formation of two bodies called by Schaudinn, Synkarions, which themselves again unite, and thus restore nuclear equilibrium. During schizogony, which occurs while the organism is parasitic, and therefore influenced by different extrinsic