The staff in the emblem emphasises Vis medicatrix naturae, the primordial mystery of life, which we can observe by way of bioplasm (living protoplasm).
Conservation of Vis occurs within bioplasm, necrotic cells are incapable of Vis conservation.
(1) It now seems to me that the evidence, which at that time seemed so strongly to favor the idea of the importance of the grosser materials of the egg, is insufficient to establish its case, and that the important factors of development are dynamic properties of the
bioplasm, rather than the formed products of the egg, or of the differentiated products of the adult animal.