Inquiries into the Development of the Vertebrates (not translated) of
Robert Remak, of Berlin (1851). This gifted scientist succeeded in
mastering, by a complete reform of the science, the great difficulties
which the cellular theory had at first put in the way of embryology. A
Berlin anatomist, Carl Boguslaus Reichert, had already attempted to
explain the origin of the tissues. But this attempt was bound to
miscarry, since its not very clear-headed author lacked a sound
acquaintance with embryology and the cell theory, and even with the
structure and development of the tissue in particular. Remak at length
brought order into the dreadful confusion that Reichert had caused; he
gave a perfectly simple explanation of the origin of the tissues. In
his opinion the animal ovum is always a simple cell: the germinal
layers which develop out of it are always composed of cells; and these
cells that constitute the germinal layers arise simply from the
continuous and repeated cleaving (segmentation) of the original
solitary cell. It first divides into two and then into four cells; out
of these four cells are born eight, then sixteen, thirty-two, and so
on. Thus, in the embryonic development of every animal and plant there
is formed first of all out of the simple egg cell, by a repeated
subdivision, a cluster of cells, as Kolliker had already stated in
connection with the cephalopods in 1844. The cells of this group
spread themselves out flat and form leaves or plates; each of these
leaves is formed exclusively out of cells. The cells of different
layers assume different shapes, increase, and differentiate; and in
the end there is a further cleavage (differentiation) and division of
work of the cells within the layers, and from these all the different
tissues of the body proceed.

These are the simple foundations of histogeny, or the science that
treats of the development of the tissues (hista), as it was