The Commonwealth of Cells

Essay V.

THE BODY 94

CONCLUSION 107

INDEX 113

INTRODUCTION

The unscientific public is extremely prone, and not altogether without reason, to take medicine as a starting-point, and arrange all biological science around it. As it is, moreover, apt to gauge the interest and utility of every branch of this science from a practical point of view, and bestows most attention upon that which it imagines is of the greatest service to the doctor, I think a series of popular essays on physiology could not commence with more advantage, at any rate to physiology, than by briefly discussing, not with what it deals, for that is pretty generally known, but what is its relation to medicine. Further, as the doctor is more easily discussed than medicine, the physiologist will be more manageable for our immediate purpose than physiology in the abstract, so we will devote the first few pages to the question of how his labours benefit the patient.

Everyone knows the doctor, and everyone knows that physiology deals with the ‘functions of different organs of the body’; but the public rarely meet the physiologist, except in the fanciful caricatures of his enemies, which though frequently personal are rarely accurate. These rancorous libels, if anyone heeded them, would tend to raise doubts as to whether the physiologist was a good companion for the doctor, and if it were not as well for them to see as little of each other as possible.

The doctor, however, cannot move a step without the physiologist. His business is to correct the revolt of any organ from its allotted task, and repair the damage done by its deviation from the normal path. This he cannot possibly do if he does not know what that organ’s normal conditions are, and what they are it is the physiologist’s duty to tell him. A doctor, therefore, should be an enlightened physiologist, knowing how the body ought to work, and referring diseases to their real cause, such as the poisons formed by an invasion of bacteria or otherwise, or wrong feeding—that is to say, deficiency or excess of fuel for one of the body’s many engines. Medicine is still to a large extent rule of thumb. We don’t know to what many diseases are due, or why certain things relieve them, if any remedy is known; and until these questions are satisfactorily settled, it is vain to hope that disease as a whole can be successfully combated. It is no use knowing what will stop certain unpleasant symptoms if we do not know how to remove their real cause, and for this end the whole body and every individual component organ is being studied, that the process of life may be accurately understood; and the man who is doing this for his friend the doctor is the physiologist.

The physiologist has many enemies, a motley array of cranks held together by such noble bonds as general hatred of science and prejudiced ignorance masquerading as scepticism; but he can afford to ignore them, for the very good reason that people cannot get on without him. It is only on account of this that they are mentioned. People say, ‘The doctor is the person who requires a knowledge of physiology; he is the man who is most likely to study it successfully’—presumably by his mistakes—‘and not waste more time on it than is necessary,’ a point about which they are most solicitous. The doctor, however, prefers to trust the physiologist. If he did not, he would have very little time to do anything else. You might as well expect a tailor to make his own cloth before he makes a coat. He will doubtless be able to make better coats if the quality of the cloth supplied him is improved; but if in order to improve the finished article he lays down his scissors and applies his fingers to weaving, his business will be sure to suffer.

That physiology is a thing which can take up a man’s whole energies will, I think, be admitted by anyone who realizes how wide is its scope. The physiologist himself must specialize, for the subject is too vast for one man to undertake the whole. The body is composed of the same elements as the rest of the world, and their arrangement is very important, so he must be a proficient chemist. It is composed of solids, liquids and gases, and diffusion, filtration, leverage, are frequent processes, and every motion is accompanied by an electric manifestation, so that mechanics and physics must have been part of his training. He can scarcely study organs if he does not know their shape, so he should know some anatomy. And, lastly, as his business is to study life and all its attendant phenomena—and the basis of life is the cell—he must be a histologist. To be all these things is a great deal to require of one man; but though he may specialize for the advancement of a particular branch of his science, he must be au fait with the rest, as no vital function is dependent upon one alone of the factors enumerated. Hard work is required of him, though some people say he has done but little. What he has discovered is briefly, very briefly, set forth in the ensuing essays, with a hint or two at the knots he would like and is trying now to unravel.

THE COMMONWEALTH OF CELLS.

Some Popular Essays on Human Physiology.

Essay I.

LIVING MATTER.

Physiology is the study of life, and the thing of all others which the physiologist would like to discover is what life really is. If this were fully known, all physiological processes could probably be deduced from it, and disease, which is an interference with one or other of them, could be scientifically treated. So far he has not got beyond describing the consequences of life, and his deductions carry him no further than this: life is a property of a substance, protoplasm, and protoplasm can only continue to exist in the form of a cell.

This definition may seem a little cryptic to some people, and very shocking to others. ‘Life,’ many people are accustomed to say, ‘means the presence of a soul, and is supernatural; and as to its being a question of chemical composition, that is absurd. My being made of cells, too, will not account for my thinking.’ But when people dogmatize thus about what they have not considered, they usually find themselves landed in difficulties. They go so fast: the most spiritual of men is so dependent upon matter and its properties that his soul will speedily quit his body if he is prevented from breathing. And the reason of this is, that if he cannot get air, the chemistry of the cells of which his body is made becomes altered; he no longer consists of protoplasm, therefore he no longer lives. Life, that it may exist in a material world, must have a material basis, and if that is interfered with it becomes extinct or quits the material plane; in any case, ceases to interest the physiologist as a physiologist. I do not think anyone need be shocked at this being recognised.

It is, of course, the ambition of the physiologist to make protoplasm, but so far he has got no further than making some of the complicated bodies into which protoplasm breaks up when it dies. A little while ago this bare possibility was loudly derided, but the advance in organic chemistry has been so great of late years, and so many complicated substances which once seemed as unobtainable as protoplasm itself have been made in the laboratory, that we now have hope of a precise knowledge of the chemistry of life some day, though that day may be yet very distant.

To give an account of life is to describe as far as we are able the nature of the living substance, protoplasm; and as protoplasm is a ‘structure of compounds,’ a word or two about chemical compounds may clear the ground for discussing it. If you were to take a compound, say a lump of sugar, and start breaking it up, you could hammer for a very long time and it would be still sugar; but if a tiny fairy with a minute hammer and chisel were to go on breaking up the grains, he would ultimately have molecules of sugar before him. Each molecule would consist of exactly the same number of atoms of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, and if he divided it further by the removal of a single atom, it would no longer be sugar. He could hammer away at the atoms as hard as he liked, for they are incapable of further division.

There are seventy odd different kinds of atoms. When the molecules of a substance are composed of only one kind, it is said to be simple; when of several kinds, compound. Now, the difference between the various substances we see around us consists not only in what different kinds of atoms their molecules are composed of and their number, but in their arrangement. This arrangement may be in chains or rings, and the relative position which the different atoms occupy in the structure of a molecule makes all the difference in the world.

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