Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 126 IDIOSYNCRASY (Published in the ‘ Indian Annals of Medicine, ’ 1868.) The ovary of a woman throws off a nucleated cell, which, is named the ovum. This apparently is homogeneous in texture. If in its course outward it does not come in contact with sperm cells of the male, it is re-absorbed or is discharged: if it does come in contact with these cells, then through the influence which it receives from them, it ‘attaches itself to the interior of the womb, draws nourishment from the juices of the mother, and grows and developes. Its growth and development consist essentially in what is usually called differentiation of tissue and in increase in size. Differentiation of tissue is a word used to express the phenomena of bone, of muscle, of nerve, and of other tissues issuing from the apparently homogeneous tissue of the mother cell; and the extension of these to various distances and in various directions, whereby the human shape and size are attained, are the result common to growth and development. Now, the consequence of differentiation in tissues is a difference in the properties and functions of these tissues, and these differences are always proportionate the one to the other. This truth cannot be too much borne in mind. We have the external influences of the mother and of the sperm cellscausing differentiation in the tissue of the ovum, and, as a consequence of this, we have a difference in the properties and functions of the different tissues, or, in other words, of the differentiated portions of the homogeneous germinal tissue. Bone does not act like muscle, neither does muscle behave like nerve, nor the nerves like the mucous membranes. Again, as a difference in the combinations of external influences leads to a difference in the tissue, it follows that the tissue…
