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HISTOLOGY:
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BY W. H. ATKINSON, M.D., D.D.S.
READ before the
MICROSCOPIC SOCIETY OF NEW YORK
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HISTOLOGY.
READ BEFORE THE MICROSCOPIC SOCIETY OF NEW YORK.
   Histology may properly be said to be  an account of the
formation  and growth of tissues.  And is derived from two
Greek words—histos, a web and logos, a  discourse.  And
has been little better than a " hodge podge" of the crudities
of the older observers, copied  from  one  to  the other, with
accommodating credulity and reliance upon  the correctness
of the work ready performed to hand, out of which to con-
struct text books.   To such an extent has this been the case,
and still continues to be, that the student or reader of these
works must  be as well acquainted with the subject as the
authors,  to enable him to  understand  even that which  is
attempted to be demonstrated.
   Tissue—from texo—to weave.  Tissue is  made up of ele-
ments denominated, primary or  anatomical.  These are so
small that the natural vision  is  incapable of detecting them.
Therefore,  we  are indebted to artificial  aid for whatever
knowledge  we possess respecting these small bodies.
   This aid  consists  in  the  various  modifications of micro-
scopes, simple and compound, with a great variety of acces-
sory appliances.  Every department of  which must be well
understood and properly applied to enable us to arrive at the
demonstration of the truth.
  A complete understanding of Histology then,  involves a
knowledge  of the whole range of material (planetary) science.
For our survey is not complete until we have detected, under-
stood,  and  explained the  rise, development to  full culmi-
nation in  size and proportion, no less  than the  decadence
and death  of each variety of tissue in  all  the divisions of
material (planetary) existences denominated—primalia, min-
eral, vegetable, animal and human.
  Every tissue is made up of cells in various  stages of
obliteration.  And every cell is but an attempt at consolida- 
2
HISTOLOGY.
tion of a portion of amorphous or chaotic matter in plastic
condition.  Perfect or regular consolidation  is no less than
crvstalization.  And  every degree  of togetherness, called
consolidation, from fluid to solid, is a step in the direction of
perfectly regular crystallization.
  There  are two  causes  of fluidity at exact  antipodes  of
molecular movement to each other, viz.: intensity of molecu-
lar motion—fusion by heat as it  has  been called; and  ex-
tensity of molecular motion—separation into gases and ethers.
Whatever opposes  these states of molecular movement tends
to solidify the body.
  The radical tripod of currental lines, upon which organ-
ology stands  as a base,  is an equation  of  chemism, elec-
trism and magnetism.
  In  the  primalia these radicals  are  inclosed  in a bleb of
oxydized hydrate of carbon, the periphery of which becoming
desicated, as is  said, but  really hyperoxidized, the exterior
of the sphere (which  the bleb always is when free), becomes
endowed with a plus quantity of oxygen to  the  interior,
which  divides  the sphere  into hemispheres or concentric
spheres of plus and minus or seminal and germenal qualities,
by which proliferation takes place and we  thus have  cell
development in its simplest manifestation.
  The alternations of the generations of cells might have
been  synthetically conceived,  but it  could  not have been
analytically proven, until the microscope had been discovered
and properly constructed.
  Heterodox, as is all aphoristic pronouncement of truth to
the partially developed and pseudo-scientific minds who tarry
in the specials without being able  to perceive the generals of
the aspect of things, because they  are unable to withdraw
the mental attention  from the confusion of the unimportant
detail in  closest  proximity; nevertheless the  exercise  by
which  they differentiate  any objects  in  the field  of  view
from any other, is  in essence the same kind of mental action, 
HISTOLOGY.
3
only less in degree, that would emancipate them  from this
narrow confinement and prove their ability to soar and  see
for themselves the truths they had just before denounced as
" heterodox"—" untrue!"  If to be " sensible," man must be
superior  to the  domination of his mere  "senses:" Let  us
attempt the equation of his bodily and mental affections.
   Feeling  being  the base of all the senses, as sight is their
sum and apex, we may say that the scientific equation of the
senses may be thus stated, viz.: The five  divisions in nature,
as a whole, may be  said to  have  their sentient correspond-
ences thus:   1.  Primalia to Feeling.   2. Mineral to Taste.
3. Vegetable  to Smell.  4.  Animal to Hearing.   5. Human
to Sight.
   The pyramid is built with a broad base of many stones.
Each layer being reduced  in regular succession of unifying
refinement until  we arrive at  the  top where  one  admirable,
single, perfectly-wrought stone completes the form and limits
the outline of its beautiful  body.  The plan is adhered  to,
and the body  is perfect.  So in Nature, the Primalia  are  the
base and  man  the apex of  the  organic  structures on  this
planet.  The Orders,  Classes, Families, Genera, Species and
Varieties  being  more abundant,  occult  and practically  in-
numerable in the base, but  finally culminating in  the single
Genus and Species—Homo—in unitary type in man  as  the
sum of all the preceding, and the apex or head of the great
plan of Nature, as a whole.   It is plain then that indifferen-
tiation or  sameness, and differentiation or unlikeness are the
 dual primates, without an understanding of which we shall
 not be able to classify the works  of our  minds or bodies so
 as to be able to propound them to our fellows in understanda-
 ble, demonstrable shape.   This brings us to the dogmatic
 aphorism that there is no body without its due proportion of
 mind as certainly as that there is no segregate perception of
 things without body, in which the mind, or seat of perception,
 has its focalization, or proper residence. 
4
HISTOLOGY.
  As material science deals only with the statical  aspects of
things,  it becomes necessary  for  us to advance into the
region of dynamics proper, the field in which matter  is pro-
duced out of  substance and transmuted into all the possibles
of sameness and unlikeness, or togetherness and apartness;
the various stages and  degrees  of which constitute  every
possible variety of tissue throughout the entire range of seen
and unseen organic being.
  Transparency and opacity being  but the degrees of satis-
faction  or  dissatisfaction of  type, with residence  or  tenant
with tenement; instance, compatible, chemical solutions from
seraph  to silex, and all  possibles between these astounding
extremes !
  That the extremes are astounding to us, all will agree, but,
that there is any real relation betAveen them, I have not the
confidence to hope that many will admit at first view.  No
one rejects truth, knowing it  to be such; but we are  apt to
call  that truth only which  is  in the garb  of some already
known and established presentment thereof.
   An attempt to prove the  reality of  relation between a
burning seraph and a brilliant crystal of silex, to the mind
that demands that the testimony shall all be brought down to
his own particular  position, while he refuses to be carried up
to higher and clearer  fields of survey, the traverse of which
would empower him to perceive relations before  out  of  the
range of his  perceptive ability; would be much like  demon-
strating the higher relations of number and form, so clearly
provable in  mathematics and geometry, by the necessary
preparatory training and development of apprehensive power,
to him who had grown to manhood  without the advantages of
a primary school,  a difficult task, and a lifetime  labor of love,
—first, to  remove  all  the  obstacles, and then impress each
step of the process, deep enough to enable him to hold  the
singulars near enough together, and in the proper order of
relation to favor  their  cancellations into the general which 
HISTOLOGY.                      5
swallows them each  and all  in the presentment of their
rounded proportion of clear and  satisfactory demonstration.
  If, then, all truth, to be communicated or taught to others,
must  first  be put forth in  positiveness of statement, some-
times invidiously  called " dogmatic propositions,'' we must
expect to have it cautiously received by the truly philosophic
mind,  bluntly  scouted  and rejected  by  the  self-sufficient
dogmatic mind, and listlessly stared at by the superficial and
frivolous cast of mental endoAvment; and  so  amid ail these
discouragements have a weary Avay to general demonstration
and recognition.  But  as there  must have been a time when
the  present splendid array  of  clearly proven  and firmly
established truth was outside of all human apprehension of
its power and  presence; it is evident that there must have
been a will and a way by Avhich this blank became the Avell-
 stocked book of recorded experiences upon which men of science
 make such multifarious interchange of that which each, in his
 individual  researches,  may have come  in possession of, in
 fact and  philosophy, which together constitute that which Ave
 call scientific attainment.
   The fact is nowadays  we  are  so universally born into
 the Avorld already so  richly endoAved Avith the labors of others,
 that we very complacently come into the splendid accumula-
 tions of the pecuniary and  mental wealth  attained by our
 predecessors,  and find  it much easier  to accept and use it
 than  to  inquire how they became so  marvellously  endowed.
 But if we do not learn  this first lesson of their success, it is
 certain that the +ime will come  when we shall be bankrupt in
 both  money and that  knowledge which  teaches us how to
 retrieve our lost fortunes.
    To  get  at  general  propositions such  as  the tremendous
 equations of greatest differences, we must transport ourselves
 mentally back to the time when the morning stars sang their
 first  symphony, immediately after darkness and  nonentity
 had been  dissipated by the  power of that voice which said 
6
HISTOLOGY.
" let it be," and lo it stood forth, first in elemental chaos out
of which each  form then took  serial order  from highest to
lowest and lowest to highest.   Another dogmatic formula of
power and presence, or dynamic and material correspondences,
will  enable us to apprehend more exactly the degrees of
mental  labor or the process  by Avhich we work up  into our
intellects the feelings that spontaneously arise in and pervade
our sentient natures.   By going one step below the  primalia
(or feeling) and one above  man (or sight), we are enabled to
produce  the section of a complete human sentient centre or
the  exact  formula  of  mental  operation, viz.;  1.  Chaos
(corresponds by antithesis)  to  knowledge  (demonstration).
And here we repeat the five senses  and their co-relatives,
with the single difference of beginning Avith chaos as unity,
thus:   2.  Primalia  to  Feeling.   3.  Mineral  to Taste.  4.
Vegetable  to  Smell.   5.  Animal to Hearing.  6.  Man to
Sight.   7.  Supernal (Sentiency) to Inspiration.  By adding
chaotic,  and  supernal states  to  the  former diagram  or
section we are  enabled to perceive in  this corrected  one how
we are  connected  above and below, and thus get out of our
mere senses into states of definite and indefinite apprehension
whereby to measure curselves  and correctly take  our true
position in the  universe, physically, mentally and morally.
   It was stated that " chaos" (matter  in its strictest sense),
" by antithesis"  " corresponded to knowledge."   From an
exterior stand point this is true, but if we vieAV it as  a mental
process occurring in the individual and  capable of repetition
upon every impulse inspirationally produced, we must reverse
the order of numerical  annotations to enable us to  correctly
observe  the process of an  inspiration becoming a knowledge
or overpowering perception of the truth !  Let us say that the
individual  is formed and  ready to perform  the first act of
mentality.  A sense of need, deficiency, instructually  comes
upon  him, which  we  denominate  aspiration, this induces
1.  Inspiration which strikes the  periphery of the  mind or 
HISTOLOGY.
sentiency, causing undulations denominated 2.  Feeling, this
when culminated produces 3. Idea, which  in like manner of
gestational activity becomes 4. Thought, and by continuance
this  merges  into  5.  Opinion, and here the impetus being
regularly continued in due process of movement this merges
into  6. Belief, and this  by simple intensification of the same
centripetal action fuses  into the complete, clear and incontro-
vertible demonstration of 7. Knowledge.  Thus knowledge is
the indisputable property and most interior of the individual
mind.  Deficiency and fullness are then most interior states
and upon these will our activity or lethargy depend.
  Let us recapitulate for the sake of conciseness and clear-
ness of definition.   Attainment of knowledge is  a centripetal
direction of mental labor.  Forgetting is a  centrifugal course
of mental action.   Coming to us the first  work is (1) Inspi-
ration, (2) Feeling,  (3) Idea, (4) Thought, (5) Opinion, (6)
Belief, and (7) KnoAvledge.   Going from us, (1) Knowledge
dwindles into (2) Belief, this  into (3)  Opinion, and this  into
(4) Thought, which very  soon dies out into (5) Idea, Avhich
dissipates into the vagueness of mere (6) Feeling, when  it
ceases to be Avithin the mental grasp  the  instant  it passes
into  the  sphere of (7)  Inspiration.   And thus is  lost the
accumulations of a lifetime  by inverting the currental move-
ments in the channels  through which the acquisitions Avere
made. Probably the  greatest difficulty in  the way of exact-
ness in all matters of  science is to be found in the assumption
by each  individual observer of his particular position in the
universe  of mind  and matter being  the grand centre from
which all observations must be taken to be tolerated as even
possibly  correct.  Scientific matters   have come to  such  a
pass, that he Avho would knoAV must either  isolate himself, be
a hypocrite  or  possess  the innocency of the  dove coupled
with serpentine sapiency to  the degree of the equation of that
difficult problem of deficiency and fullness  of mental  wealth.
Do I hear some one say, " If all this and  more be involved 
s
HISTOLOGY.
in the attainment and  correct propounding of histology in
even a small department of  its bewitching  domain of knowl-
edge, I fear there are few who have the courage to undertake
it."  To which, permit  me to reply, then there are  feAV avIio
apprehend the direction in Avhich the happiness of themselves
and the whole race alone can be found, unless that happiness
be attainable in a reversion  to savagism,  for  until  we learn
how to obey laAV intelligently  we must fall back upon mere
animal instinct which would soon so reduce the population as
to make even traditional science an impossibility.   Waiving
then for the present the formation of matter out of substance,
let us contemplate  a system of organs  fully ripened in its
tissual  constituencies so as to be in possession  of a  plus
quantity of the material riches, an exact  equation  of which
constitutes the pabulum upon  which these tissues feed.   This
system  being fed above individual need, begins to lay by in
store tissue material or food for cells proper in receptacles
provided for the purpose.  This hypothetical radical of chaos
has  two distinct  forms of  bodily presence—one the type of
fluids and motile force, the other the type of solids or statical
receptivity—i.  e., active and  inactive—masculine and femi-
nine, seminal  and  germinal,  &c, &c,  or any other  name
by Avhich the inter-dependent necessities of  positivity and
negativity may be called.
   All bodies floating free in a medium rarer than themselves
are necessarily endowed Avith  an  equator, poles and  zones, in
which the resistence of the medium to the rotating and orbital
force produces  currents in  exact agreement  with the equa-
tion of these forces.
   In case the body be hard and resistant the currents will be
on the  surface, in  the medium ;  and in case of being fluid
they will be on the surface  and in the body of the fluid, to a
depth varying with  the  circumstances of the  number of the
currents in the body as a whole or a planet, and with  otber
modifying  conditions.  That  is  a dense medium and  rapid 
HISTOLOGY.
9
orbital (which is the concomitant of rapid revolving), motion
will produce rapid  and numerous currents upon the seas, so
to speak, the motion raising them, the seas, at their margins
like the  edges of  whirlpools and depressing them in  their
centers.
   The diversity of the molecular motions (heat) at the  poles
and the equator divides the body into hemispheres in which
the effort at equalization of molecular motion (heat) becomes
the prime cause of the currents from  the poles to the equator
and from this to  the  poles which constitute the currents in
circular or elliptical form in accordance with the  resistances
they meet with defining them as circles or ellipses.   In case
of variety of medium and slowness of movement of the  body,  p^
these currents will pervade larger surfaces  of the seas and
move with less rapidity therein and thus necessarily be  fewer
on the planet  and of  less proportional depth of  center and
elevation of margin or edge.
   As a sequence of the basal aphorism, " all things differ but
in degree," concrete and  discrete, it  follows that every inde-
pendent body must be a planet or a microcosm in  which
reside all  the dynamical, physical and  statical possibilities,
and hence be a sphere, until it ceases to be independent by
becoming associated with other planets so as to interfere with
its freedom;  when it divides the  dominion of space and
accommodates itself to the change of circumstance, with the
same  spontaneity that it holds  fulness  of sphericity  when
without a partner or partners in the territorial space  Avhich
it occupies.   And it then assumes  any and every form, and
deo-ree of density, necessary to  accommodate itself to the
divided  dominion.  The  blood disks and lymph corpuscles
are  the  only examples of really free bodies  in  the human
organism, hence are the only proper spheres in the economy
of " formed tissues."
   The rapidity of the movements in currental lines producing
primal bodies and mental  processes, renders them difficult of 
10
HISTOLOGY.
 observation; and  hence they have been ignored by all but a
 very few who have had to be in possession of earnestness
 (sufficient to overcome their own deficiencies coupled with the
 sharp  jeers  of their felloAVS arising from the samo cause,
 calling for "facts, more facts," before they had comprehended
 the significance of those already familiar to all), if they Avould
 make any progress of substantial character.
   This necessity for  regularity and directness of movement
 in both instances may be proven by a reference to the fact of
 quiescence being requisite to the formation of crystals and
 cells of slow growth;  such as silex, diamond  and many salts,
 Blight  agitation of the mother waters of which so effectually
 prevent their  formation:  and  the  failure of the  mind  to
 accomplish  its  work when  under the influence of adverse or
 confusing currents.
   Just so  soon as the mind fails in its central attraction, a
 chaos  of  mental ebullition holds  the dominion  until spent
 or overcome by a centripetal direction being restored to the
 currents of motion.
   I  deemed it important,  thus  cursorily, to examine the
 mental tools and enabling circumstances by which  these are
 to be brought into requisition in the  investigations before us,
 that the steps  we take  may be made  more  certain to our
 apprehension.  It is patent to every observer that that Avhich
 we call knowledge is but fractional, not rounded out to such
completeness as to commend itself alike to  the uncultured
and  the cultured mind.  This arises partly from the nature
 of the subject and partly from want of uniformity in manner
of investigation and nomenclature.  But chiefly  from the
false teachings  that have prevailed, causing one of the inves-
tigators in this  field to exclaim in the bitterness of his soul,
" Alas! the  scientific mind is steeped in the senses and is the
drudge of their limited  sphere !" to which I would  add, and
so long as it remains under this dominion it will be incapable
©f any thing better  than the accumulation  of incoherent, 
HISTOLOGY.
11
meaningless facts without a  cause  or use.   But if we can
intelligently accept the trite aphorism, " all things differ but
in degree, of concrete and discrete proportions," we Avill have
clone more to get  at  the clear understanding of our subject,
than if we  had  aggregated every fact in the universe without
being  able to deduce  the law or plan of nature, which they
all tend to prove, the moment they are properly corelated.
   And now, as the whole body derives its force from respira-
tion, so also do the least  as well  as the largest constituents
thereof depend upon  the diastolic and systolic synchronism
of each (breathing) to perform its proper function.
   And as the entire system is  at one time but a bleb—a
proliferation of cell—a mere dermatozoon, the further pos-
sible evolution  of which depends upon an influx of  a something
to awaken its dormant power into an active  directing force;
it does seem plain that all function is  readily reducible to the
formula of breathing (i. e.) inspiration (taking in) digestion
 (placing) and expiration (throwing out).
   Then  if cells  are begotten, gestated, born, live  out their
 alloted term of  occupancy and dominion of time and space
 and then die, it is evident that many  generations in alterna-
 tions  must live  and  die in   the production of the tissues we
 are so desirous  to detect in their metamorphoses into the
 organs out of which  our  personal bodies are so intricately
 constructed.
   The eye can never settle this occult and  important quest,
 in any but those examples of cells, tissues and  organs  that
 are in their  normal, living  state, quite transparent, so that
 the metamorphoses may be seen  and  recorded.
   That  this will not soon be accomplished  in regular serial
 order in human  organisms I  dare not now assert; for it has
 occurred to me so often in witnessing the reproduction of lost
 tissues, to see vessels spring up in the transparent plasm, which
 occupied the former position of the primary structures, until
 their abundance  obscured the field, that it is more than probable 
12
HISTOLOGY.
that the possibility of the portraiture  of these successive
stages is nigh upon us in some of the enthusiastic hands who
now are becoming interested in the matter.
   From all that I have seen, read and heard, I have no doubt
that reproduction follows  the role of production of  tissues
and organs in all forms of being where it takes place at all.
   As  this  has been proven over and over again in  trans-
parent bodies, and as  nature is averse to doing  her work  in
diverse ways to bring about the same result, we are  safe in
setting this down as one of her  settled and certain laws by
which we may be guided in all  our efforts to interpret the
unseen by  that which  doth  so clearly appear.  The harmoni-
ous difference of chemism,  electrism and magnetism, consti-
tutes  not  only the origin  of individual existences, but the
harmonious play of every function  in  health.  And just  so
soon as either has been withdrawn or supplied in excess  to
any degree, a pure physiology can no longer be said to hold
the dominion of the cells, tissues,  organs, or  systems in which
this state of things exists.
   If then  the degrees and modes of obliterations of cells
constitute  the differences  of the tissues we meet with  in
original production, generation, regeneration  and degenera-
tions  of all the tissues in health  and disease ; have we not a
herculean task to accomplish if we  attempt  annotations  and
nominations for all the appreciable forms already familiar  to
us  in  what  may  not  inaptly be called, but  the dawn  of
histological research ?   That the  tissues are but obliterations
of cells and vessels we are now happily able to prove.
   Thanks to the revealments instigated by the investigations of
a singular disease, viz.: " Trichiniasis."  These little parasites
by the law  of their nature find their way into the capillaries
which  supply muscular fibre and there become encysted by
acting  as emboli.  And when not too numerous do not inter-
fere with the function of the part longer than it requires  to
form new vessels and new fibres for the use of the body. 
 
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