VOL. 4 (1950) 



A CHALLENGE TO BIOCHEMISTS 



reversible part of the volume change is attributable mainly or wholly to pressure set 

 up by contraction. The elegance and clarity of Meyerhof's work and its description 

 impressed itself again as it had done in earlier days. One might criticize some of the 

 conclusions, but not the methods or results. To read these papers once more was a sudden 

 pleasure, after so many in which one could not be sure what an author had really done I 





My last reprint from Heidelberg is dated 1938. Perhaps if Hitler had not driven him 

 from the beautiful Institute and the excellent colleagues and facilities he had there, the 

 succession of papers on muscle — living muscle — might have continued. Alas that they 

 could not! This paper, however, is to challenge him and his disciples to make a few 

 more chemical investigations on living muscle, to see how far the chemistry in vitro 

 of muscle extracts can be fitted to the physical facts of muscular contraction. 



It is customary for biochemists {e.g., Baldwin^, p. 341) to describe "The probable 

 course of events in normal muscular contraction" is some such terms as these: 

 References p. 11. 



