alcoholic solution of acetic acid, and forms large crystals which melt at 153° C., and are easily soluble in water, alcohol and chloroform. It is a secondary and tertiary di-acid base, and is strongly alkaline in its reaction. Hydrogen peroxide oxidizes it to oxycytisine, C11H14N2O2, chromic acid to an acid, C11H9NO3, and potassium permanganate to oxalic acid and ammonia. It acts as a violent poison.
See further, P. C. Plugge, Arch. der Pharm. (1891), 229, p. 48 et seq.; A. Partheil, Ber. (1890), 23, p. 3201, Arch. der Pharm. (1892), 230, p. 448; M. Freund and A. Friedmann, Ber. (1901), 34, p. 615; and J. Herzig and H. Meyer, Monats. f. Chem. (1897), 18, p. 379.
CYTOLOGY (from κύτος, a hollow vessel, and λόγος, science),
the scientific study of the “cells” or living units of protoplasm
(q.v.), of which plants and animals are composed. All the higher,
and the great majority of the lower, plants and animals are
composed of a vast number of these vital units or “cells.” In
the case of many microscopic forms, however, the entire organism,
plant or animal, consists throughout life of a single cell. Familiar
examples of these “unicellular” forms are Bacteria and Diatoms
among the plants, and Foraminifera and Infusoria among the
animals. In all cases, however, whether the cell-unit lives freely
as a unicellular organism or forms an integral part of a multicellular
individual, it exhibits in itself all the phenomena characteristic
of living things. Each cell assimilates food material,
whether this is obtained by its own activity, as in the majority
of the protozoa, or is brought, as it were, to its own door by the
blood stream, as in the higher Metazoa, and builds this food
material into its own substance, a process accompanied by
respiration and excretion and resulting in growth. Each cell
exhibits in greater or less degree “irritability,” or the power of
responding to stimuli; and finally each cell, at some time in its
life, is capable of reproduction. It is evident therefore that in
the multicellular forms all the complex manifestations of life
are but the outcome of the co-ordinated activities of the constituent
cells. The latter are indeed, as Virchow has termed
them, “vital units.” It is therefore in these vital units that the
explanation of vital phenomena must be sought (see Physiology).
As Verworn[1] said, “It is to the cell that the study of
every bodily function sooner or later drives us. In the muscle
cell lies the problem of the heart beat and that of muscular
contraction; in the gland cell reside the causes of secretion;
in the epithelial cell, in the white blood corpuscle, lies the problem
of the absorption of food, and the secrets of the mind are hidden
in the ganglion cell.” So also the problems of development and
inheritance have shown themselves to be cell problems, while
the study of disease has produced a “cellular pathology.”
The most important problems awaiting solution in biology are
cell problems.
Historical.—The cell-theory ranks with the evolution theory in the far-reaching influence it has exerted on the growth of modern biology; and although almost entirely a product of the 19th century, the history of its development gives place, in point of interest, to that of no other general conception. The cell-theory—in a form, however, very different from that in which we now know it—was originally suggested by the study of plant structure; and the first steps to the formulation, many years later, of a definite cell-theory, were made as early as the later part of the 17th century by Robert Hooke, Marcello Malpighi and Nehemiah Grew. Hooke (1665) noted and described the vesicular nature of cork and similar vegetable substances, and designated the cavities by the term “cells.” A few years later Malpighi (1674) and Grew (1682), still of course working with the low power lenses alone available at that time, gave a more detailed description of the finer structure of plant tissue. They showed that it consisted in part of little cell-like cavities, provided with firm cell-walls and filled with fluid, and in part of long tube-like vessels. A long time passed before the next important step forward was made by C. L. Treviranus,[2] who, working on the growing parts of young plants, showed that the tubes and vessels of Malpighi and Grew arose from cells by the latter becoming elongated and attached end to end, the intervening walls breaking down; a conclusion afterwards confirmed by Hugo von Mohl (1830). It was not, however, until the appearance of Matthias Jakob Schleiden’s paper Beiträge zur Phytogenesis (1838) that we have a really comprehensive treatment of the cell, and the formulation of a definite cell-theory for plants. It is to the wealth of correlated observations and to the philosophic breadth of the conclusions in this paper that the subsequent rapid progress in cytology is undoubtedly to be attributed. Schleiden in this paper attempted to solve the problem of the mode of origin of cells. The nucleus (vide infra) of the cell had already been discovered by Robert Brown (1831), who, however, failed to realize its importance. Schleiden utilized Brown’s discovery, and although his theory of phytogenesis is based on erroneous observations, yet the great importance which he rightly attached to the nucleus as a cell-structure made it possible to extend the cell-theory to animal tissues also. We may indeed date the birth of animal cytology from Schleiden’s short but epoch-making paper. Comparisons between plant and animal tissues had already been made by several workers, among others by Johannes Müller (1835), and by F. G. J. Henle and J. E. Purkinje (1837). But the first real step to a comprehensive cell-theory to include animal tissues was made by Theodor Schwann. This author, stimulated by Schleiden’s work, published in 1830 a series of Mikroskopische Untersuchungen über die Übereinstimmung in der Structur und dem Wachstum der Tiere und Pflanzen. This epoch-making work ranks with that of Schleiden in its stimulating influence on biological research, and in spite of the greater technical difficulties in the way, raised animal cytology at one blow to the position already, and so laboriously, acquired by plant cytology. In the animal cell it is the nucleus and not the cell-wall that is most conspicuous, and it is largely to the importance which Schwann, following the example of Schleiden, attached to this structure as a cell constituent, that the success and far-reaching influence of his work is due. Another feature determining the success of Schwann’s work was his selection of embryonic tissue as material for investigation. He showed that in the embryo the cells all closely resemble one another, only becoming later converted into the tissue elements—nerve cells, muscle cells and so forth—as development proceeded; just as a similar mode of investigation had enabled Treviranus to trace the origin from typical cells of the vascular tissue in plants more than 30 years previously. And just as Treviranus showed that there was a union of cells to form the vessels in plants, so Schwann now showed that a union of cells frequently occurred in the formation of animal tissues.
So great was the stimulus given to cytological research by the work of Schleiden and Schwann that these authors are often referred to as the founders of the cell-theory. Their theory, however, differed very greatly from that of the present time. Not only did they suppose new cells to arise by a sort of “crystallization” from a formative “mother liquor” or “cytoblastema” (vide infra), but they both defined the cell as a “vesicle” provided with a firm cell-wall and with fluid contents. The cell-wall was regarded as the essential cell-structure, which by its own peculiar properties controlled the cell-processes. The work of Schleiden and Schwann marks the close of the first period in the history of the cell-theory—the period dominated by the cell-wall. The subsequent history is marked by the gradual recognition of the importance of the cell-contents. Schleiden had noticed in the plant cell a finely granular substance which he termed “plant slime” (Pflanzenschleim). In 1846 Hugo von Mohl applied to this substance the term “protoplasm”; a term already used by Purkinje six years previously for the formative substance of young animal embryos. Mohl showed that the young plant cell was at first completely filled by the protoplasm, and that only later, by the gradual accumulation of vacuoles in the interior, did this substance come to form a thin layer on the inner surface of the cell-wall. Mohl also described the spontaneous movement of the protoplasm, a phenomenon already noted by Schleiden for his plant slime, and originally discovered by Bonaventura Corti in 1772 for the cells of Chara, and rediscovered in 1807
