Cell bodies in a cage

摘要

The concept of the cell as the fundamental structural and functional unit of a multicellular organism stems from the observations of Robert Hooke in 1665 and Nehemiah Grew in 1682, both of whom reported on the 'cells' of plant tissues. It was 150 years before the universal 'German cell theory' ― as it was originally known ― was proposed by Theodore Schwann and Matthias Schleiden, but even this was not widely accepted for another 100 years. Brain tissues, with their large neurons interconnected by very long thin processes known as axons, had represented a particular hurdle for the early cytologists. But after the cellular basis of neurons and brain tissue had been accepted following the work of Ramon y Cajal and Camillo Golgi, cell theory spread rapidly as a rather dogmatic doctrine.