Preventable Diseases | Page 9

fibrosis of Bright's disease. They are the sturdy farmers and ever ready "minute-men" of the cell-republic, and we find their prototype and parallel in the external world, both in material structure and degree of vitality, in the well-known sponge and its colonies.
Next in order, and, in fact, really forming a branch of the last, we find the great group of storage-tissues, the granaries or bankers of the body-politic, distinguished primarily, like the capitalist class elsewhere, by an inordinate appetite, not to say greed. They sweep into their interior all the food-materials which are not absolutely necessary for the performance of the vital function of the other cells. These they form first into protoplasm, and then by a simple degenerative process it is transformed, "boiled down" as it were, into a yellow hydrocarbon which is capable of storage for practically an indefinite period. Not a very exalted function, and yet one of great importance to the welfare of the entire body, for, like the Jews of the Middle Ages, the fat-cells, possessing an extraordinary appetite for and faculty of acquiring surplus wealth in times of plenty, can easily be robbed of it and literally sucked dry in times of scarcity by any other body-cell which happens to need it, especially by the belligerent military class of muscle-cells. In fever or famine, fat is the first element of our body-mass to disappear; so that Proudhon would seem to have some biological basis for his demand for the per capita division of the fortunes of millionaires. And yet, rid the fat-cell of the weight of his sordid gains, gaunt him down, as it were, like a hound for the wolf-trail, and he becomes at once an active and aggressive member of the binding-stuff group, ready for the repair of a wound or the barring out of a tubercle-bacillus.
And this form of specialization has also its parallel outside of the body in one of the classes in a community of Mexican ants, whose most distinguishing feature is an enormously distended [oe]sophagus, capable of containing nearly double the weight of the entire remainder of the body. They are neither soldiers nor laborers, but accompany the latter in their honey-gathering excursions, and as the spoils are collected they are literally packed full of the sweets by the workers. When distended to their utmost capacity they fall apparently into a semi-comatose condition, are carried into the ant-hill, and hung up by the hind legs in a specially prepared chamber, in which (we trust) enjoyable position and state they are left until their contents are needed for the purposes of the community, when they are waked up, compelled to disgorge, and resume their ordinary life activities until the next season's honey-gathering begins. It scarcely need be pointed out what an unspeakable boon to the easily discouraged and unlucky the introduction of such a class as this into the human industrial community would be, especially if this method of storage could be employed for certain liquids.
Another most important class in the cell-community is the great group of the blood-corpuscles, which in some respects appear to maintain their independence and freedom to a greater degree than almost any other class which can be found in the body. While nearly all other cells have become packed or felted together so as to form a fixed and solid tissue, these still remain entirely free and unattached. They float at large in the blood-current, much as their original ancestor, the am[oe]ba, did in the water of the stagnant ditch. And, curiously enough, the less numerous of the two great classes, the white, or leucocytes, are in appearance, structure, pseudopodic movements, and even method of engulfing food, almost exact replicas of their most primitive ancestor.
There is absolutely no fixed means of communication between the blood-corpuscles and the rest of the body, not even by the tiniest branch of the great nerve-telegraph system, and yet they are the most loyal and devoted class among all the citizens of the cell-republic. They are called hither and thither partly by messenger-substances thrown into the blood, known as hormones, partly by the "smell of the battle afar off," the toxins of inflammation and infection as they pour through the blood.
The red ones lose their nuclei, their individuality, in order to become sponges, capable of saturating themselves with oxygen and carrying it to the gasping tissues. The white are the great mounted police, the sanitary patrol of the body. The moment that the alarm of injury is sounded in a part, all the vessels leading to it dilate, and their channels are crowded by swarms of the red and white hurrying to the scene. The major part of the activity of the red cells can be accounted for by the mechanism of the heart and blood-vessels. They are simply