and "cell-wall" are essential to a cell; the other, that cells are usually formed independently of other cells; but, in 1839, it was a vast and clear gain to arrive at the conception that the vital functions of all the higher animals and plants are the resultant of the forces inherent in the innumerable minute cells of which they are composed, and that each of them is, itself, an equivalent of one of the lowest and simplest of independent living beings—the Torula.
From purely morphological investigations, Turpin and Schwann, as we have seen, arrived at the notion of the fundamental unity of structure of living beings. And, before long, the researches of the chemists gradually led up to the conception of the fundamental unity of their composition.
So far back as 1803, Thenard pointed out, in most distinct terms, the important fact that yeast contains a nitrogenous "animal" substance; and that such substance is contained in all ferments. Before him, Fabroni and Fourcroy speak of the "vegeto-animal" matter of yeast. In 1844, Mulder endeavored to demonstrate that a peculiar substance, which he called "proteine," was essentially characteristic of living matter.
In 1846, Payen writes:
I recognize, in the numerous facts which have come under my observation, a law which has no exception, and which will lead us to regard vegetal life under a new aspect. If I am not mistaken, whatever we can discern under the form of cellules and vessels represents nothing but protective envelopes, reservoirs, and conduits, wherein the animated bodies which secrete and construct them find a home, food, and the means of transporting it, and where they throw off and reject excretory matter.
And again:
To state fully the general fact, I repeat that bodies which discharge the functions performed by the tissues of plants, are formed of elements which, in slightly different proportion, make up animal organisms. Hence we are led to recognize a wonderful unity of elementary composition in all living bodies.[1]
In the year (1846) in which these remarkable passages were published, the eminent German botanist, Yon Mohl, invented the word "protoplasm," as a name for one portion of those nitrogenous contents of the cells of living plants, the close chemical resemblance of which to the essential constituents of living animals is so strongly indicated by Payen. And through the twenty-five years that have passed, since the matter of life was first called protoplasm, a host of investigators, among whom Cohn, Max Schulze, and Kuhe, must be named as leaders, have accumulated evidence, morphological, physiological, and chemical, in favor of that "wonderful unity of elementary composition in all living bodies," into which Payen had, so early, a clear insight.
- ↑ "Mém. sur les Développements des Végétaux," etc.—"Mém. Présentées," ix., 1846.
