MULTIPLICATION OF CELLS.
Although von Mohl, the botanist, seems to have been the first to recognize (1835) in plants a multiplication of cells by division, it was not until attention was given to the study of the egg in various animals and to the changes which take place in it, attendant on fertilization, that in the course of time a much more correct conception of the origin of the nucleus and of the part which it plays in the formation of new cells was obtained. Before Schwann had published his classical memoir in 1839, von Baer and other observers had recognized within the animal ovum the germinal vesicle, which obviously bore to the ovum the relation of a nucleus to a cell. As the methods of observation improved, it was recognized that, within the developing egg, two vesicles appeared where one only had previously existed, to be followed by four vesicles, then eight, and so on in multiple progression until the ovum contained a multitude of vesicles, each of which possessed a nucleus. The vesicles were obviously cells which had arisen within the original germ-cell or ovum. These changes were systematically described by Martin Barry so long ago as 1839 and 1840 in two memoirs communicated to the Royal Society of London, and the appearance produced, on account of the irregularities of the surface occasioned by the production of new vesicles, was named by him the mulberry-like structure. He further pointed out that the vesicles arranged themselves as a layer within the envelope of the egg or zona pellucida, and that the whole embryo was composed of cells filled with the foundations of other cells. He recognized that the new cells were derived from the germinal vesicle or nucleus of the ovum, the contents of which entered into the formation of the first two cells, each of which had its nucleus, which in its turn resolved itself into other cells, and by a repetition of the process into a greater number. The endogenous origin of new cells within a preëxisting cell and the process which we now term the segmentation of the yolk were successfully demonstrated. In a third memoir, published in 1841, Barry definitely stated that young cells originated through division of the nucleus of the parent cell, instead of arising, as a product of crystallization, in the fluid cytoblastema of the parent cell or in a blastema situated external to the cell.
In a memoir published in 1842, John Goodsir advocated the view that the nucleus is the reproductive organ of the cell, and that from it, as from a germinal spot, new cells were formed. In a paper, published three years later, on nutritive centers, he described cells, the nuclei of which were the permanent source of successive broods of young cells, which from time to time occupied the cavity of the parent cell. He extended also his observations on the endogenous formation of cells to the cartilage cells in the process of inflammation and to other tissues undergoing pathological changes. Corroborative observations on endogenous formation were also given by his brother, Harry Goodsir, in 1845. These observations on the part which the nucleus plays by cleavage in the formation of young cells by endogenous development from a parent center—that an organic continuity existed between a mother cell and its descendants through the nucleus—constituted a great step in advance of the views entertained by Schleiden and Schwann, and showed that Barry and the Goodsirs had a deeper insight into the nature and functions of cells than was possessed by most of their contemporaries, and are of the highest importance when viewed in the light of recent observations.
In 1841 Robert Remak published an account of the presence of two nuclei in the blood corpuscles of the chick and the pig, which he regarded as evidence of the production of new corpuscles by division of the nucleus within a parent cell; but it was not until some years afterwards (1850 to 1855) that he recorded additional observations and recognized that division of the nucleus was the starting-point for the multiplication of cells in the ovum and in the tissues generally. Remak’s view was that the process of cell division began with the cleavage of the nucleolus, followed by that of the nucleus, and that again by cleavage of the body of the cell and its membrane. Kölliker had previously, in 1843, described the multiplication of nuclei in the ova of parasitic worms, and drew the inference that in the formation of young cells within the egg the nucleus underwent cleavage, and that each of its divisions entered into the formation of a new cell. By these observations, and by others subsequently made, it became obvious that the multiplication of animal cells, either by division of the nucleus within the cell, or by the budding off of a part of the protoplasm of the cell, was to be regarded as a widely spread and probably a universal process, and that each new cell arose from a parent cell.
Pathological observers were, however, for the most part inclined to consider free cell-formation in a blastema or exudation by an aggregation of molecules, in accordance with the views of Henle, as a common phenomenon. This proposition was attacked with great energy by Virchow in a series of memoirs published in his ‘Archiv,’ commencing in Vol. 1, 1847, and finally received its death-blow in his published lectures on Cellular Pathology, 1858. He maintained that in pathological structures there was no instance of cell development de novo; where a cell existed, there one must have been before. Cell-formation was a continuous development by descent, which he formulated in the expression omnis cellula e cellulâ.