Cell therapeutics / by William Addison.

  • Addison, William, 1802-1881.
Date:
1856
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Cell therapeutics / by William Addison. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    and animalcules (cells) in the other. In both cases visible and regular bodies appear, and the fluids have undergone changes; in both there has been a species of attraction, decomposition, and growth. The changes in the saline solution are in obedience to physical laws ; those in the vegetable infusion are, we think, rightly considered in subjection to the laws of vital action, to the formative power and metabolic processes of cells. A room full of air will remain a long time unchanged, but if a multitude of living individuals—plants or animals—be placed in it, a change in the air speedily ensues. The indivi- duals exhibit activity—the plastic power of cells— and changes in the air, thus crowded with Hving beings, are referred, not to mere chemical action, but to the performance of vital acts, the metabolic power of cells. In the domain of Science there is a primary and fundamental division into things possessing and things not possessing life. As long as this classifi- cation is preserved, the microscopical physiologist is constrained to frame his theories in subordination to it, to refer the chemical changes observed in the