[29] From the quite recent experiments M. Baillon has submitted to the Académie des Sciences (15th February, 1875), it appears that although cut flowers absorb colored fluids, the roots when intact only absorb the fluid, and reject the coloring matters, by a veritable dialysis.
[30] Gerlach cited by Ranke, op. cit., p. 76.
[31] Stein, Der Organismus der Infusionsthierchen, 1859, p. 76.
[32] Stahl had a profound conviction of the radical difference, though he was not able to point out the conditions involved. See his Disquisitio de mechanismi et organismi vera diversitate.
[33] M. Fernand Papillon has shown that animals may be fed with food deprived of phosphates of lime if its place is supplied with magnesia, strontia, or alumina; they make their bones out of these as out of lime. But no such substitution is possible in muscle, nerve, or gland; we cannot replace the phosphate of magnesia in muscles by the phosphate of iron, lime, or potash, as we can replace the iron of a wheel by steel, copper, or brass.
[34] Anatomy resolves the Tissues into Organites (cells, fibres, tubes); here its province ends, and that of Chemistry begins by pointing out the molecular composition of the Organites.
[35] This luminous conception, though vaguely seized by Pinel, was first definitely wrought out by Bichat. See his Recherches sur la Vie et la Mort—and especially his Anatomie Générale, 1812, I. p. lxx. It was one of the most germinal conceptions of modern times.
[36] Just as there go other materials besides canvas to make a sail, and others besides iron to make a windlass, so there go other tissues besides the muscular to form a muscle—there is the membranous envelope, the nerve, the blood-vessels, the lymphatics, the tendon, and the fat. Even in Contraction there is another property involved besides the Contractility of the muscular element, namely, the Elasticity of the fibrous wall of the muscular tube; but Contractility is the dominant property, and determines the speciality of the function.
[37] “L’élément musculaire peut être annexé à une foule de mécanismes divers; tantôt à un os, tantôt à un intestin, tantôt à une vessie, tantôt à un vaisseau, tantôt à un conduit excréteur, tantôt enfin à des appareils tout à fait spéciaux à certaines espèces d’animaux.”—Claude Bernard, Rapport sur les Progrès de la Physiologie générale, 1867, p. 38.
[38] Vulpian, Leçons sur la Physiologie du Système Nerveux, 1866, p. 581. In a work just published I find M. Luys hesitating at the consistent application of this law. After pointing out the identity of the tissue in cerebrum and spinal cord, he is only prepared to say that we cannot deny that there is no impossibility in admitting physiological equivalence where there is morphological equivalence.—Luys, Actions Reflexes du Cerveau, 1874, p. 14.