Perhaps nothing indicates more clearly the recent progress of cytology
than the very title of this report. Thirty years ago such a subject would
have been unthinkable, and Frey-Wyssling ( 1955), in his article “Die
submikroskopische Struktur des Cytoplasmas,” was right when he quoted
the following passage by Guillermond, Mangenot, and Plantefol, dated
1933, which vividly sums up, the opinion of that time: “Le cytoplasme
proprement dit se prksente, sur le vivant comme une substance colloidale
homoghne, translucide, optiquement vide i l’ultramicroscope.”