126 BIOCHIMICA ET BIOPHYSICA ACTA VOL. 4 (1950) 



THE DEVELOPMENT OF MUSCLE-CHEMISTRY, A LESSON 

 IN NEUROPHYSIOLOGY 



by 



ALEXANDER VON MURALT 



Hallerianum, Bern [Switzerland] 



In the development of muscle-chemistry four different periods can be distinguished : 

 the pre-lactic acid era, the lactic acid era, the period of phosphorylations and the myosin 

 period. The name of Otto Meyerhof is intimately connected with three of them. In no 

 field of physiology has knowledge advanced so far towards the fundamental and ele- 

 mentary processes of function as in muscle chemistry. This advancement is mainly 

 due to Otto Meyerhof's brilliant conception of chemical and physical aspects and to 

 the unparalleled cooporation of two masterminds in different fields. Otto Meyerhof 

 AND A. V. Hill. 



In the prelactic acid era, although it starts paradoxically with Berzelius, who 

 discovered in 1841 that muscles of exhausted deer contained more lactic acid than 

 muscles of animals with partially paralysed extremities^, the role of lactic acid was quite 

 unrecognized. There was even a very temperamental discussion as to what might be 

 the fuel for muscular work. Fick and Wislicenus^, who climbed the Faulhorn (1956 m), 

 between the lake of Brienz and the valley of Grindelwald, collected their urine and 

 showed conclusively in a famous paper in 1865 that the excreted nitrogen corresponded 

 only to 37 g of protein, which by no means accounted for the work done. This statement 

 caused the long-held belief of Liebig, that protein is the source of muscular activity, 

 to be discarded and attention to be drawn to carbohydrates. Six years later Weiss^ 

 showed that the glycogen content of muscle decreases with the work done, and it seems 

 that LucHSiNGER^ in Ziirich was the first to recognize the importance of nutrition for 

 the maintenance of a sufficient glycogen content of the muscles, and to point out that 

 glycogen is the intermediate energy carrier between ingested foodstuffs and activity. 

 The next step was only reached in 1893 when Panormoff^ showed that glycogen in 

 muscle is hydrolysed to glycose. Among the many original observations which Du Bois- 

 Reymond made, it seems that he was the first to recognize that a muscle becomes acid 

 with activity and to relate this finding to Berzelius's observation of the formation of 

 lactic acid®. It is quite amazing to see how, as early as 1859, a very clear conception 

 existed and how it's development was delayed by the following accumulation of a great 

 mass of very unimportant evidence up to the end of the century. This is even more 

 surprising when we see that Heidenhain' had found that the amount of lactic acid 

 increased with the amount of work done. Nasse® who seems to have had great influence 

 at this time however believed that lactic acid was only formed in rigour and death, and 

 did not recognize the importance of Helmholtz's^ fundamental finding that the alco- 

 holic extract of muscle decreased with activity, whereas the aqueous extract increased. 

 References p. I2g. 



