Proteus

“ There are obvious resemblances that strike us at once. He looks the same, he acts the same, he has the same mannerisms, the same kind of voice, and he answers to the same name. If Proteus, with the best intention in the world, but with an unlimited variety of self-manifestations, were to call every day, we should greet him always as a stranger. ”

“ Thou friend of an ill fashion!
PROTEUS.
Valentine!
VALENTINE.
Thou common friend, that’s without faith or love,
For such is a friend now. Treacherous man,
Thou hast beguiled my hopes; nought but mine eye
Could have persuaded me. Now I dare not say
I have one friend alive; thou wouldst disprove me.
Who should be trusted, when one’s right hand
Is perjured to the bosom? Proteus,
I am sorry I must never trust thee more,
But count the world a stranger for thy sake.
The private wound is deepest. O time most accurst,
’Mongst all foes that a friend should be the worst! ”

“ But truer stars did govern Proteus' birth;
His words are bonds, his oaths are oracles,
His love sincere, his thoughts immaculate,
His tears pure messengers sent from his heart,
His heart as far from fraud as heaven from earth. ”

“ You must lie in wait for her coming and take her unawares, press her hard and clasp her in a tight embrace, and force her to yield. Form is a Proteus more intangible and more manifold than the Proteus of the legend ”

“ Let us say a word or two on their nature and peculiarities.
Far down among the lowest forms of animal life with which we are acquainted, is the strange organism known as the Proteus (Amœ ba diffluens) ; it is nothing more than a small lump of jelly without integument, but endowed with the capability of moving and eating, if eating it may be called. Special organs for this or any other function it has none, but the whole of the gelatinous body covers and encloses within itself any atom capable of affording nutrition, and becomes mouth and stomach both, when occasion requires. ”

“ At the same time (which is not our time!) , and as Intelligence takes on a leading part in morals, there will come the indulgent recognition that such a “decency” as we may exact (or try to exact) from ourselves, cannot, any more than personal cleanliness in our own day, be exacted from all our neighbours. It may take a good many transformations of Proteus before the mote can always be removed from our brother’s eye, even supposing the beam to have been taken away from our own. ”

“ In the meanwhile you must denude your mind of every human passion or affection, such as are love and hatred, fear and hope, for as of old the great vaticinator, most famous and renowned prophet Proteus, was not able in his disguise or transformation into fire, water, a tiger, a dragon, and other such like uncouth shapes and visors, to presage anything that was to come till he was restored to his own first natural and kindly form ”

“ The Proteus is one of those remarkable reptiles which breathe at the same time through lungs and gills, having on each side of the neck three rose-red branchiæ, which it retains through life, as its lungs are but imperfectly developed. ”

“ The proteus, an animal of the frog kind, inhabiting the subterraneous waters of Carniola, and which never acquires perfect lungs so as to become a land animal, is presumed to be an example of arrested development, from the same cause. When, in connexion with these facts, we learn that human mothers living in dark and close cells under ground,—that is to say, with an inadequate provision of air and light,—are found to produce an unusual proportion of defective children, [229] we can appreciate the important effects of both these physical conditions in ordinary reproduction. ”

“ After explanations Glaucus willingly accompanied him to Proteus lair.
The pact was sealed. Glaucus would be returned to his prior form. Proteus was to return once more to Poseidon's service. "And myself?" Demo queried.
"It shall be as with Glaucus."
Proteus smiled, if one can say a squid smiles. At least, he grimaced.
"How, then, do we deal with Oceanus? You know of his rekindled ambition. What can be done to placate one such as he?"
They talked long, examining the problem each from his own perspective. "It is a problem without solution!" exclaimed Proteus. "He seems invincible. ”

“ In common with all the other gods, Proteus enjoyed the gift of prophecy, and had the power to assume any shape he pleased. The former gift he was wont to exercise very reluctantly; and when mortals wished to consult him, he would change his form with bewildering rapidity, and, unless they clung to him through all his changes, they could obtain no answer to their questions.
“Shouting [we] seize the god: our force t’ evade,
His various arts he soon resumes in aid:
A lion now, he curls a surgy mane ”

“ Hystericks, uterine suffocation, and female nervous diseases. This morbid Proteus rarely attacks before puberty, most frequently between puberty and middle age. Married and single women are obnoxious to it; but more so the latter and widows, and those barren, or irregular in menstruation. It is not so frequent amongst the laborious class, or those of clumsy organs, as in the higher ranks, and particularly in those constitutions strung to a morbid extreme of nervous and muscular sensibility and irritability. ”

“ Πρωρευς εν τῃ νησῳ δηχθεις ὑπο οφεως εταφη. This Pilot was bitten by a serpent, and buried in the island. Conformable to my opinion is the account given by Tzetzes, who says, that Proteus resided in the [626] Pharos: by which is signified, that he was the Deity of the place. He is represented in the Orphic poetry as the first-born of the world, the chief God of the sea, and at the same time a mighty [627] prophet.
The history then of Menelaus in Egypt, if such a person ever existed, amounts to this. In a state of uncertainty he applied to a temple near Canobus, which was sacred to Proteus. ”

“ Homer, Iliad, bk. 2, li. 205.—Ovid, Metamorphoses, bk. 12, fable 1; Heroides, poem 13, li. 17.—Propertius, bk. 1, poem 19.—Hyginus, fable 103, &c.
Proteus, a sea deity, son of Oceanus and Tethys, or, according to some, of Neptune and Phœnice. He had received the gift of prophecy from Neptune because he had tended the monsters of the sea, and from his knowledge of futurity mankind received the greatest services. He usually resided in the Carpathian sea, and, like the rest of the gods, he reposed himself on the sea-shore, where such as wished to consult him generally resorted. ”

“ Proteus, a sea-god who was endowed with the power of prophecy. He could change himself into any shape in order to avoid having to prophesy. See Homer, Odyssey, iv, 366 seq., and Vergil, Georgics, iv, 387.
90. herbes. In the sixteenth century the belief in potions, magic formulas, etc., was still strongly rooted in the popular mind. The Spanish court and the priests were supposed to employ supernatural agencies against the Protestants.
105. A faithless Sarazin. Spenser uses the word Saracen in the general sense of pagan. ”

“ All Protista have a soul—that is to say, are “animate”—as well as all animals and all plants. The soul’s activity in the Protista manifests itself in their irritability, that is, in the movements and other changes which take place in consequence of mechanical, 69 electrical, and chemical irritation of their contractile protoplasm. Consciousness and the capability of will and thought are probably wanting in all Protista. ”

“ Purposes of Proteids.—The chief purpose of proteids in the body is to rebuild the tissues. Not only do they supply all of the main elements in the tissues, but they are of such a nature chemically that they are readily built into the protoplasm. They are absolutely essential to life, no other nutrients being able to take their place. An animal deprived of them exhausts the proteids in its body and then dies. In addition to rebuilding the tissues, proteids may also be oxidized to supply the body with energy. ”

“ Petersburg, in his essay, “Protoplasm and Vital Force.”92 He sharply castigates the one-sidedness and impetuosity of the mechanical theory, as in Haeckel's discovery of Bathybius and of non-nucleated bacteria. The latter [pg 253] are problematical, and the former has been proved an illusion. To penetrate farther into the processes of life is simply to become aware of an ever-deepening series of riddles. There is no such thing as “protoplasm,” or “living proteid,” or indeed any unified, simple “living matter” whatever. ”

“ Proteids are confessedly among the most complex bodies the physiologist has to deal with, while at the same time they are perhaps the most important, not only in view of their wide-spread distribution through animal and vegetable tissues, but because of the prominent part they take in the nutrition of the body. The more our knowledge is broadened concerning these varied substances, the more we are impressed with their complexity, and at the same time with the necessity for a more accurate study of both their composition and constitution. ”

“ We also know definitely just what use the body makes of these various substances. The Proteid is the up-builder of tissue, the essential foodstuff without which life cannot exist. If we compare the human body to an engine, as nearly all physiologists seem bound to do, we may say that Proteid is like the brass, or other metal, of which the structure is composed. The various Carbohydrates and the [Pg 99] Fats are the fuels from which are derived the energy which animates and operates the mechanism. ”

“ It is true that, with the limitations of our present knowledge, it is difficult to see why if digestive proteolysis has for its sole object the conversion of the proteid foods into forms suitable for absorption there should be any considerable breaking down of proteid beyond the proteose or peptone stage, since the latter bodies would seem to be most easily adaptable for transformation into the proteids of blood, lymph and tissue. ”

“ According to physiological authority which we must, for the moment, accept, proteid is a vitally-necessary material and we cannot afford to waste it. Our life depends upon proteid to replace the waste of muscular tissue which occurs [Pg 4] with every movement, but when even good proteid is found by the mouth to be in a form that is too refractory for the teeth to handle, it is poor policy to send it on to the toothless stomach and intestines for the accomplishment of the reduction. If the mouth cannot handle what its guardian senses don't like, it can spit it out and get rid of it immediately ”

“ The proteids of the tissues serve the double purpose of forming a working part of the cell protoplasm, and of supplying reserve food material. That they are available for supplying energy, and are properly regarded as storage material, is shown by the rapid loss of proteid in starving animals. When the proteids are eaten in excess of the body's need for rebuilding the tissues, they are supposed to be broken up in such a manner as to form glycogen and fat, which may then be stored in ways already described. ”

“ Worthy of special notice is the fact that cell protoplasm is essentially proteid in nature; water and proteid make up the larger part of its substance, to which are added small proportions of carbohydrate, fat, and mineral matter. Proteid is the basis of cell protoplasm; it is the chemical nucleus of living matter, and owing to the large size of its molecule, with its large number of contained atoms, is capable of many combinations and many alterations. ”

“ The 'Physical basis of life' has been driven into a corner, hunted down, seized at last, and over the heads of an eager, panting, chasing generation, is triumphantly dangled this 'Scientific Fox' brush, 'Nucleated Protoplasm, the structural unit!' But how or whence sprang the laws of 'Protein'? ”

“ Taking into account all of the circumstances attending the circulation of the blood through the abdominal organs, especially the rate of flow, and remembering the great increase in the number of leucocytes contained in the blood during the several hours attending digestive proteolysis, it is plain that a comparatively large amount of proteid matter must be transferred from the intestine to the blood in the bodies of the white corpuscles so abundantly produced in the lymph glands, etc., during proteid digestion. ”

“ The threefold Division of the Drama, into Protasis, Epitasis, and Catastrophe, or, as others, in the Terms of Aristotle, to the very same Effect, into Prologue, Episode, and Exode, seems very natural [Pg 266] and easy; tho' neither of these Divisions is peculiar to any Act. By Protasis is meant that Part which is a Narrative of what has pass'd, and an Introduction to what is to follow: In the Epitasis, Incidents as they are call'd by the Moderns, arise; all Things are in Confusion, involv'd in Doubts and Difficulties ”

“ Assuming for the moment the correctness of this theory, we see at a glance that all disruption of proteid matter in the body must be preceded by the upbuilding of the proteid into living protoplasm. There can be no destruction of proteid until the latter has been raised to the high plane of living matter. ”

“ With reference to the action of the stomach-mucosa on proteoses, it has been shown219 that when relatively large amounts (5 grammes) are introduced into the stomach of a rabbit, the pylorus being ligatured, both proteoses and peptones may appear in the urine, thus indicating that while they may be absorbed to some extent under the above conditions, the proteoses are not readily transformed into native proteids without exposure to the intestine. ”

“ There is no doubt that the protamines of one type or another are integral parts of every proteid molecule, and when their chemical constitution is made quite clear, much will have been accomplished toward a fuller understanding of the more complicated forms. ”