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DEATH RATES AND MORTALITY.

Per 1,000 Inhabitants, Annually, in the Largest Amerscan and Foreign Cities

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THE

SAINT LOUIS

MEDICAL AND SURGICAL

Journal.

VOL. XXXVI-JUNE, 1879-No. 6.

Original Contributions.

ARTICLE XVIII.

GENESIS.-BY HIRAM CHRISTOPHER, M. D., of Independence, Mo.

IX.

There are but few, if any, words used with less precision and discrimination than the word protoplasm. This is true of its use by vitalists as well as evolutionists. It is sometimes applied to the contents of the cell-organism; 1 sometimes to the primordial utricle and the substance which it encloses; to all these things together with the cellulose wall; to the matter composing the sarcode of the foraminifera; to that which constitutes the amoeba, white blood-corpuscles, and other naked masses of germinal matter; to the matter between the so-called nucleus and muscular tissue, and to the contractile matter itself; to everything which exhibits contractility; to nerve fibers, and to other structures possessing remarkable endowments, and to soft matter

1 Gray's Botany, p. 26.

within an elementary part, as a cell of epithelium; to the hard external part of such a cell, and to the entire epithelial cell.2 Gray applies it to the elaborated sap; and Carpenter, to "formed matter," proteinaceous in composition and nutritive in quality"the appropriate pabulum for vegetable cells. Prof. Huxley, whose views as to the genesis of living organisms would seem to require a well-settled conception of the genesis and nature of protoplasm, is not more fortunate in the use of the word than others. But in his "Lay Sermons and Addresses," when discoursing on Spontaneous Generation, he gives the conception which he at that time considered and which other believers in the doctrine of evolution do now consider, as to the substance properly called protoplasm. He there says, "If he had been present, and could have seen the operation of physical forces when they reached the work of organized substances in the progress of their evolutionary action, he would have expected to witness the evolution of protoplasm from non living matter, and to see it appear under forms of great simplicity, endowed, like existing fungi, with the power of determining the formation of new protoplasm from such matter as the ammonium carbonates, oxalates and tartrates, alkaline and earthy phosphates, and water without the aid of light," (p. 367). Etymologically, means the first formed organic matter, and is so viewed by Gray, when he speaks of it as the elaborated sap of plants, and by Huxley, when he conceives of it as the first organic work of the evolutionary force of physical agents.

But it has also an appropriated meaning, and in this sense it was used by Prof. Huxley in his Lay Sermons. With the scientists of that school, it not only means the first-formed, but is conceived of as having a power capable of evolving from its substance living organisms. With them, it is the germinal matter, itself non living, from which all living organisms take the genesis of their being, through the operation of the same force as that which generated the protoplasm from purely material substances, viz. the physical, or the psychical conceived of as but a modifica tion of the physical. Such a substance does not exist, and never did. If physical forces could, at the beginning of life on the earth,

2. Beale, Protoplasm, p. 30.

3. Botanical Text Book, pp. 53, 57. 4. Comparative Physiology, p. 375. 5. Beale, Protoplasm, p. 13.

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have created such a substance, they ought to be able now to do the same. If, then, it is impossible for physical agents to create such a substance now, as has been demonstrably proved by the failure of all efforts made to show that spontaneous generation is a natural process, it is wholly an assumption to say that they could have done so at any time since the existence of matter. This fact alone is sufficient to show that the protoplasm of the evolutionist is a myth, and a physical impossibility.

If we limit the use of the term to the first-produced organic matter, the life-product of the action of the leaves of the plant is the only organic substance that can be etymologically, and in this sense, properly, called protoplasm-the elaborated sap of Gray, and the appropriate pabulum for vegetable cells of Carpenter. This is a substance formed from inorganic matter, and the first formed; but it is the work of living cells which have the power of forming organized substances out of inorganic matter. Only the artopoietic organs of the plant have this power. No other living organisms have this power. This is the beginning of the production of organized substances, but not the beginning of living organisms. These precede the others, and are absolutely essential to their existence. There was no protoplasm in which, or from which, they originated. The plant is the primary structure, and forms in its own organism the pabulum that contributes, and is necessary, to all its vital functions or operations. The elaborated sap, or the proteinaceous compound-the protoplasm which is found in its organism, is its own pabulum; and were it removed, would contribute to the nutrition of other living organisms. It is not a living substance, nor capable of generating life; only of contributing to the vital operations of living organisms, as pabulum. It is as dead in the plant as it is out of it; hence, as a substance capable of generating living organisms in or from its substance, as contemplated by the protoplasm of the evolutionist, it has no power whatever. It is a life product and not a life producer.

We have, then, but two kinds of organized matter, viz.: 1st, the living organism; and, 2d, its products. The "formed matter" and "pabulum" of Dr. Beale are really but one substance essentially. They have the same genesis, and, hence, in this respect, may be regarded as one. The bathybius of Huxley, and the protoplasm of evolutionists are myths. There is no diffused living matter, nor a diffused organized substance out of

which living organisms arise spontaneously. Living beings are of necessity localized, because individuals. The organism is an agent of the life power, and essentially and necessarily finite in all the elements of its structure. The life is not in the matter.

This is evident from the fact that organized matter of the same composition may be either living or dead. The living matter of the cell is proteinaceous in composition, and so is its "formed matter." An analysis shows the same composition as respects the material that constitute their fabric; but one is living and the other dead. The latter can never be changed into the former; and this fact draws a broad line between the nature of the two. It is capable of the widest diffusion without losing its character or identity, or becoming individualized, and by such diffusion it never presents centers of further diffusion, growth, or reproduction, features which are characteristic of living matter, or the living being.

It is very questionable whether living matter ever exists independent of the cell. Localization is essential to the idea of a living organization. If that which is called living matter, is really the living being, all other parts of the cell organism must be regarded as non-essential to the existence of the living being. As a fact, we know that no living being is alive in all its parts. The cell is the prototype, in this respect, of the matured individual; and as we regard the latter as the living being, we must also look on the cell organism as the living being. This is composed of contents and wall, and though the moving contents alone are alive, yet the whole organism, contents and wall, must be regarded as the living being. Now, as such, in all their entirety, did individuals begin. If as cells, then as contents and wall, as living and formed matter. If as germs, spores or seeds, then as such they began life, or as such were created-as such took their genesis; but whether as these, or as the matured individual, we can only conjecture in most cases. That some began as matured individuals we may feel assured, by the fact that the young of many animals, and especially of man, could not have survived extrusion from the uterus without the immediate and constant attention of the parent. Hence we may conclude that man began as the matured individual. Beginning in a cell of microscopic dimensions, that cell could never have been formed without the union of a germ and sperm cell, nor developed without the subsequent nutrition of the fertilized cell in connection with

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