CELL THEORY.
It had, indeed, long been recognized that the tissues of plants were to a large extent composed of minute vesicular bodies, technically called cells (Hooke, Malpighi, Grew). In 1831 the discovery was made by the great botanist, Robert Brown, that in many families of plants a circular spot, which he named areola or nucleus, was present in each cell; and in 1838 M. J. Schleiden published the fact that a similar spot or nucleus was a universal elementary organ in vegetables. In the tissues of animals also structures had begun to be recognized comparable with the cells and nuclei of the vegetable tissues, and in 1839 Theodore Schwann announced the important generalization that there is one universal principle of development for the elementary part of organisms, however different they may be in appearance, and that this principle is the formation of cells. The enunciation of the fundamental principle that the elementary tissues consisted of cells constituted a step in the progress of biological science which will forever stamp the century now drawing to a close with a character and renown equalling those which it has derived from the most brilliant discoveries in the physical sciences. It provided biologists with the visible anatomical units through which the external forces operating on, and the energy generated in, living matter come into play. It dispelled forever the old mystical idea of the influence exercised by vapors or spirits in living organisms. It supplied the physiologist and pathologist with the specific structures through the agency of which the functions of organisms are discharged in health and disease. It exerted an enormous influence on the progress of practical medicine. A review of the progress of knowledge of the cell may appropriately enter into an address on this occasion.