The Foundation of the Cell Theory

SCHLEIDEN, Matthias Jacob.

Beiträge zur Phytogenesis.

Berlin: Veit et Comp. 1838.

1st Edition. Hardcover. Near Fine. Item #002059

In: Archiv für Anatomie, Physiologie und wissenschaftliche Medicin 5, Heft 2 (1838), pp 137-76. Includes two etched and aquatint plates (nos. III and IV) on one folding sheet. Berlin: Veit et Comp., 1838. 8vo (209x128 mm). Whole volume: [2], cxcviii, 608 pp. 16 plates on 15 sheets. Pp. 605-8 bound before p.1 . Contemporary marbled boards, rebacked and repaired. Light browning, occasional faint spotting. Provenance: Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle Paris (stamps to general title-page). A fine copy of an exceedingly rare paper, only one other copy is recorded to have appeared at auctions in the past 50 years (Norman sale, 1998, offprint issue, $18,400). Both, PMM and Sparrow list the journal issue. ----

PMM 307a; Sparrow 175; Norman 1907 (offprint issue); Hughes, History of Cytology, 37ff; Garrison-Morton 112; DSB XII, p.173-174. -
THE VERY RARE FIRST EDITION of Schleiden's enunciation of his cell theory, in which he stated that the cell is the basic unit of plant life. A well-to-do botany professor who gave up academia to devote himself full-time to a successful career as lecturer and writer of popular scientific works, Schleiden made a name for himself through the present paper, which provoked wide discussion and was quickly translated into French and English. Schleiden was the first to postulate that plant tissue is composed of aggregates of individual cells, and attempted in this article to describe the development of the vegetable cell. His mistaken view based on a theory "as old as the study of the cell itself" (DSB), was that the cell develops from a nucleus or "cytoblast' which crystallizes within an amorphous primary liquid composed of sugar, gum and mucous. Although this theory of spontaneous generation of the cell was erroneous, Schleiden's work marked an important stage in the development of modem cell theory. A year later Theodor Schwann was to bring it one step further with his conclusion that cells were the basic unit of animal as well as plant life, and the two are generally regarded as co-founders of the cell or Schleiden-Schwann theory.

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