Page 33 - Ethel D. Hume - Bešam ili Paster: Izgubljeno poglavlje u istoriji biologije

BfiCHAMP OR PASTEUR?
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was belief in a substance called albumen, best represented
by white of egg, which was said to mix with certain
mineral and other matters without changing its nature.
B. Dumas demonstrated that such "albuminoids" com-
J.
prise not one specific thing, but many different bodies; but
the contrary opinion prevailed, and for such substances
"protoplasm" was adopted as a convenient term. It was
"the physical basis of life," according to Huxley; but this
hardly illumined the difficulty, for thus to pronounce
protoplasm to be matter living per se, was not to explain
the mystery ofhow it was so, or its origin and composition.
True, Huxley further declared all living matter more or
less to resemble albumen, or white of egg; but this latter
was also not understood either by biologists or chemists.
Charles Robin regarded it as being of the type of the
mucoids, that is to say, as resembling mucus, which latter
was so shrouded in mystery that Oken called it Urschleim
(primordial slime), and the botanist, Hugo Mohl,
identified it with protoplasm, thus dignifying mucus as the
physical basis of all things living!
Claude Bernard tried to determine the relation of
protoplasm to organisation and life and combated the
general idea that every living body must be morpho-
logically constituted, that is to say, have some structural
formation. He argued that protoplasm gave the lie to this
belief by its own structural indefiniteness. Charles Robin
followed the same view and gave the name of "Blasteme"
from a Greek word, meaning to sprout, to the supposed
primordial source of living forms.
This was nothing but the old idea of living matter,
whether called protoplasm or blasteme. A cell, a fibre, a
tissue, any anatomical element was regarded as living
simply because of its formation by this primordial sub-
stance. Organisation was said to be its "most excellent
modification." In short, formless matter was supposed to
be the source of all organised living forms. In a kind of
despair of any experimental demonstration of organisation
and life, a name was invented for a hypothetical substance