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.
CHAPTER VI
THE SUPPORTING FRAMEWORK
SINCE protoplasm is so very soft and fragile it must be supported