Chapter 6 No.6

But we must proceed to examine the behavior of the various kinds of cells of which the various multicellular organisms are composed.

Plants were known to be composed of cells, and their cells were studied and described some years before it was understood that animals also are composed of cells as units. Even then, however, the first propounders of the cell theory (Schleiden and Schwann) had no clear or accurate idea of the origin of cells, or of their essential characters and structure. As to origin, they supposed that cells arose by a sort of crystallization from a mother liquor; and as to structure, they looked upon the cell-wall as the really important part, the fluid contents being quite subordinate. Hugo von Mohl (1846) applied to the fluid contents of the cell the term "protoplasm," and Max Schultze (1861) showed that this protoplasm is really identical in all organisms, plants and animals, also that the cell-wall is frequently absent in many animal tissues and in many unicellular forms, indicating that the protoplasm is the really important substance. By this time also it had become known that cells never arise de novo, as had been supposed by the earlier investigators, but that cells arise only by division of preexisting cells; or as Rudolf Virchow (1858) expressed it, "omnis cellula e cellulā."

It was, however, many years before the details of the growth and reproduction of the cells (cell-division) became well understood. Not until the last quarter of the nineteenth century was it settled that the nucleus of the cell is also a supremely important part; but finally in 1882 Flemming was able to extend Virchow's aphorism to the nucleus also: omnis nucleus e nucleo.

Since these discoveries our knowledge of the methods of cell-division has much increased; and in the light of our modern knowledge of these matters there is nothing in all nature more marvellous than the regular orderly way in which cells reproduce themselves according to fixed laws. Certain cells in the developing embryo, for example, are early set apart for a particular function or for building certain structures, and thereafter are never diverted from this duty so as to do a different work or produce a different kind of structure. In the young embryo certain structures arise at certain predestined times in particular places, and only there and out of these cells alone. As to why it should be so, we cannot tell, save as the result of deliberate design and as an expression of the order-loving mind of the God of nature. In the words of one of the greatest of modern authorities, "We still do not know why a certain cell becomes a gland-cell, another a gangleon-cell; why one cell gives rise to smooth muscle-fiber, while a neighbor forms voluntary muscle.... It is daily becoming more apparent that epigenesis with the three layers of the germ furnishes no explanation of developmental phenomena."[11]

In accordance with the general principle of a division of labor, certain cells become early set apart to particular functions, and in accordance with the varying demands of these functions the developing cells may become greatly changed in form and in vital characteristics. That is, one cell specializes, let us say, in secretion, another in contractility, another in receiving and carrying stimuli, etc. In this way we will have the gland-cell, the muscle-cell, and the nerve-cell, each cell destined to produce one of these organs developing others "after its kind," the result being that it is soon surrounded with numerous companions doing a similar work, making up in this way a particular tissue or organ--gland, muscle, or nerve--which in the aggregate has for its function the work of the particular cells composing it.

But the important thing for us to remember in this connection is that when cells once become thus differentiated off and dedicated to any particular function, they can never grow or develop into any distinctly different type of cell with other and different functions. It is true that through pathologic degeneration the form and even the function of cells may become greatly changed; but never does it amount to a complete metamorphosis or complete transformation into another distinctly different type.

This is a very important principle, and it contains so many lessons for us bearing on the philosophy of life in general that it may be allowable to establish this fact by several somewhat lengthy quotations from standard authorities.

The first will be from one of the highest authorities on embryology, Charles Sedgwick Minot, of Harvard:

"In accordance with this law [of differentiation] we encounter no instances, either in normal or pathological development, of the transformation of a cell of one kind of tissue into a cell of another kind of tissue; and further we encounter no instances of a differentiated cell being transformed back into an undifferentiated cell of the embryonic type with varied potentialities."[12]

Again, we have the following from one of the foremost pathologists, as to the strict and rather narrow limits of even pathologic change:

"Epithelium and gland cells ... never become converted into bone or cartilage, or vice versa; while, again, it may be laid down that among epiblastic and hypoblastic tissues, on the one hand, and mesoblastic tissues on the other, there is no new development or metaplasia of the most highly specialized tissues from less specialized tissues; a simple epithelium cannot in the vertebrate give rise to more complex glandular tissue, or to nerve cells; in regeneration of epithelium there is no new formation of hair roots or cutaneous glands. The cells of white fibrous connective tissue have not been seen to form striated or even non-striated muscle."[13]

As implied by these quotations, a constant and progressive differentiation of cells prevails in the developing embryo; and when complete, certain groups of cells act as specialists in doing only certain kinds of work for the body. These cells maintain their specific characters in a very remarkable degree under normal conditions. Under various abnormal conditions, however, these cells may become modified as to functions, so that cells or tissues of one type may assume more or less completely the characters of another type. "But," as a very high authority declares, "the limitations in this change in type are strictly drawn, so that one type can assume only the characters of another which is closely related to it. This change of one form of closely related tissue into another is called metaplasia....

"When differentiation has advanced so that such distinct types of tissue have been formed as connective tissue, epithelium, muscle, nerve, these do not again merge through metaplasia. There is no evidence that mesoblastic tissues can be converted into those of the epiblastic or hypoblastic type, or vice versa."[14]

This modification of function among the cells which sometimes goes on in the developing embryo, or under pathologic conditions, is very closely analogous to the variation which goes on among species of animals and plants. But, as we shall see later, there is a well marked limit to this variation among species, just as we see there is in the variations among the cells. Practically the same general laws hold good in each case.

If cells did not maintain their ancestral characters in a very remarkable way, what would be the use of grafting a good kind of fruit onto a stock of poorer quality? The very permanency of the grafts thus produced is proof of the persistency with which cells reproduce only "after their kind."