A GOOD deal has been said thus far about living cells without anything at all having been said to tell what they look like, or how they are made up, beyond the statement that they consist of living protoplasm, which is of a jellylike consistency. To look at living cells through a microscope would almost surely be a disappointment at first, for protoplasm is so transparent that not much of its form can be seen on direct inspection. Fortunately for our knowledge of how cells are made up, protoplasm that has been properly killed and preserved takes stain very well, and different chemical substances in the protoplasm stain differently. Thus features that could not be made out at all in the living cells become clearly visible after killing and staining. The first thing that attracts the attention when cells thus prepared are studied is that every cell has somewhere within it, and usually near its middle, a spot which is more deeply stained than any other part of the cell. This indicates the presence of a substance or substances that take stain more readily than the mass of the protoplasm. This peculiarity led to the naming of the deeply staining portion of the protoplasm chromatin, referring to the ease of staining. The part of the cell which contains chromatin is called the nucleus. In many kinds of cells the nucleus can be made out by an expert observer without resorting to stains, although the details of structure cannot be seen in that way.

We now know that the nucleus, or rather the chromatin that it contains, plays a remarkable and interesting rÔle in the life of the cell. To this we shall return presently. The remainder of the protoplasm, outside of the nucleus, shows the greatest possible variety of form, according to the kind of cell at which we happen to be looking. In some of the simpler types this part of the protoplasm seems to be merely a nearly uniform mass, perhaps with tiny particles scattered through it. In other types the protoplasm is drawn out into long slender threads, and these threads may have many branches; or the protoplasm may be distorted into a thin shell inclosing a mass of fat; or it may be subdivided into dense and thin portions with sharp lines of division between them. These various forms are related to the special functions which the cells have, and we shall learn more about them as we take up the different functions in order. On the whole, study of cell structure shows clearly that the protoplasm outside the nucleus carries on the greater part of the metabolism or power development, and is correspondingly important as the seat of the special functions shown by the cell. If it is a muscle cell, this is the part that does the moving; if a gland cell, this is the part that secretes. Nevertheless, the nucleus is a vital part of the cell. It has been definitely proven that a cell from which the nucleus is lost cannot survive more than a brief time. To gain some idea of the actual part played by the nucleus, we shall have to return to it in some detail.

Before undertaking a further description of the nucleus itself, we shall be helped to an understanding of its function if we trace briefly the history of the cells which make up our body. At the beginning, as we probably all know, we start life as a single cell. This cell, after a series of events which will be described in a later chapter, begins the process known as development. Development consists of a series of subdivisions of cell material. At first the single cell divides into two; each of these then divides, giving four. At the next stage eight are formed, then sixteen and so on, until finally the millions of cells that make up the body are produced, all derived from the original single cell. We know that in the adult body there are very many different kinds of cells. Since they are all derived from a single cell, these differences must have put in their appearance during the course of the various cell divisions. In fact, this happens all along; at definite points in the process the two cells that come from the subdivision of some particular one will not be alike. The special kinds of cells that are thus produced become the starting points for whole masses of similar cells in the fully developed body. In human beings, and probably in most other kinds of animals, the very first subdivision does not result in any difference between the cells. The proof of this is that sometimes, in fact fairly often, the two cells become separated. When this happens twinning results, and the twins are exactly alike, being known as “identical twins.” Not only are they alike in all other respects, but they are always of the same sex, a fact that has escaped the attention of some writers of fiction, who have made twins, identical in all other features, brother and sister, instead of both boys or both girls. Twins that are not identical come from different original cells that happened to start developing together. Such twins need have no more resemblance than any members of the same family, and may or may not be of the same sex.

In every cell division the first step consists in a division of the chromatin of the nucleus, which is followed by a division of the rest of the protoplasm. The process by which the chromatin is subdivided is so curious as to be worth a brief description. The

chromatin material is not a simple lump in the nucleus. It looks rather like a tiny string of beads thrown down carelessly, so as to become all mixed together. Each bead is a single bit of chromatin, and these bits are strung on a tiny thread. In an ordinary cell the beads are so mixed together that no order can be distinguished among them, but if a cell that is about to begin dividing is looked at it is found that the string has straightened itself out, and also that it has broken into pieces. The individual pieces are called chromosomes and their number is always the same for any one kind of animal or plant. There is a parasitic worm whose cells have only four chromosomes, and the number ranges from this up to as many as forty-eight in human beings. It may be that other species have even more, but they become so hard to count when there are as many as forty-eight that the number cannot be stated with certainty. So far as can be judged, the number of chromosomes has little to do with the complexity of the animal or plant, for some complex forms have few chromosomes, and some simple forms many.

At the same time as the chromatin is breaking up into chromosomes two tiny spots put in their appearance in the protoplasm of the cell on opposite sides of the nucleus, and tiny threads extend from one spot to the other through the nucleus. There are as many threads as there are chromosomes, the whole group making up a spindle-shaped figure. The chromosomes now become arranged at the middle of the spindle, and apparently each chromosome becomes fastened to a thread. Next each chromosome splits lengthwise through the middle and by what looks like a shortening of the threads the split halves are pulled apart and drawn to opposite tips of the spindle. The purpose of this elaborate scheme seems to be to insure an exactly equal division of the chromosomes between the cells, and the necessity of such an equal division will become clear when we learn something of what the chromatin is for. Meanwhile the description of cell division can be finished by saying that after the halves of the chromosomes are pulled apart the whole mass of protoplasm divides through the middle. As we stated above, sometimes the cells thus produced are alike and sometimes they are different, according to whether they are destined to become parts of similar or of different structures. In either case the chromatin material that goes into the two cells is exactly alike, so that if the cells themselves become different there must have developed a difference in the protoplasm at the two ends of the cell from which they came. Our bodies are made up of millions of cells, of a great many different kinds, but however different they may be the chromatin of each exactly duplicates that of every other one, or did when the cells were first formed; there is reason to believe that the chromatin may become changed during the lifetime of the cells, at least in some cases.

We may be interested in inquiring how long this process of cell division keeps up. Many children do not get through growing until they are twenty years old or more. Does cell division keep on during all this time? More than that; are there any cases of cell division that continue after full growth is reached? The answer to both these questions can be given in a brief paragraph. There are some tissues, particularly the outer layer of the skin, the connective tissues, the blood-corpuscle-forming tissues, and the reproductive tissues, in which cell division continues during all or most of life. The others finish at birth or shortly thereafter. We are born with the precise number of muscle cells with which we shall die, unless accident deprives us of some meanwhile; and if this happens no new ones will be formed to replace those that are lost. The same is true of gland cells. The last cell divisions among nerve cells are believed to occur within a few months after birth. As most of us have observed in our own cases, bodily injuries, if at all severe, are followed by the formation of scars. This means that connective tissue has grown in to fill the place of the cells destroyed by the injury, which cannot be replaced by cells of their own sort, since they have lost the power of cell division.

We have tried, in the above paragraphs, to get some idea of what living cells are like, and how they are derived, but have not attempted any detailed picture of particular kinds of cells. That will have to wait till we reach the story of the different kinds of bodily activity, when the cells that carry on each kind will have to be described more exactly. Something has also been told of the chromosomes, but the full account of them and their meaning is to be taken up in a later chapter, devoted to the matter of heredity and reproduction. In what remains of the present chapter we wish to talk about the conditions in which cells live so that we shall easily picture how they carry on their metabolism.

As an introduction to this topic a word may be said about the wide differences of complexity that are found in animals. They range from the simplest imaginable, a single cell with its nucleus and with protoplasm that appears almost uniform throughout, to a highly organized body like that of man, composed of millions of cells of many different kinds. Between these extremes almost every possible form is seen. The one-celled animals themselves show a wide range of complexity, and as soon as animals begin to be formed of numbers of cells grouped together the possibilities of complexity increase in proportion. One important difference between one-celled and many-celled animals needs to be emphasized; that is the matter of size. There are definite limits to the size that a single cell may attain; these limits are just over the boundary of naked eye vision. If animals are to attain larger sizes, they must necessarily be composed of many cells. The life of a single-celled animal presents no special problem, since it has only to take in through its outer layer from the surrounding water the various food materials and the oxygen which its metabolism requires, and to discharge into the same water any chemical products that may result from that same metabolism, and the question of whether it will live or die depends only on whether the water in which it happens to be contains sufficient materials and is otherwise suitable as a place to live. A many-celled animal, whose cells are arranged in not more than two layers, is in practically the same situation, for every cell has a frontage on the water and so can carry on interchanges of material directly; but the moment complexity reaches a stage where any cells are buried beneath other cells some special arrangement must be provided so that the buried cells can obtain the needed substances for their metabolism. The arrangement consists, in general, of furnishing what may be called an internal water frontage for the buried cells. In other words, complex animals have spaces all through their bodies, and these spaces are filled with fluid. There are no living tissues so dense that the cells of which they are composed are completely cut off from contact with body fluid. In thinking of our own bodies we should realize that this same arrangement applies; every one of our millions of living cells has contact with the fluid with which all the spaces of our bodies are filled, and it is from this fluid that the cells obtain the materials for their metabolism, and into this same fluid they discharge whatever substances their metabolism may produce.

The total amount of body fluid is not large, for the spaces among the cells are in most cases extremely tiny; it follows that with all the millions of cells absorbing food materials and oxygen from this fluid and discharging waste materials into it the time will soon come when no more food or oxygen will be left to be absorbed and there will be no more capacity for holding waste substances. If this state of affairs were actually to happen, metabolism would come to an end and death would be the result; evidently there must be some means of keeping the body fluids constantly renewed in respect to the things which the cells need for their metabolism, and constantly drained of the waste substances which the cells pour out. The way in which this renewal is accomplished is simple; part of the body fluid is separated off from the rest in a system of pipes, known to us as the blood vessels, and this part is kept in motion; at intervals along the system are stations at which the moving fluid can exchange substances with the fluid which actually comes in

contact with the cells; thus the stationary fluid can obtain from the moving fluid the materials which the cells, in turn, are constantly withdrawing from it, and can pass on to the moving fluid the products with which the cells are continuously charging it. All that is necessary to complete the successful operation of the system is to have additional stations at which the moving fluid can obtain supplies of food materials and of oxygen, and stations where it can get rid of the wastes which it accumulates from the stationary fluid, and there must be a pump by which the moving fluid is kept in motion. We are familiar with the moving fluid under the name of blood; the system of pipes in which it moves are the blood vessels; the pump which keeps it in motion is the heart; the various supply stations include the digestive organs, the lungs, and the kidneys. In later chapters the operation of all these stations will be described in detail. The present outline has been given to show in a general way how the problem of metabolism is handled in highly organized bodies in which the individual cells have no direct access to food or oxygen supplies.