VOL. 4 (1950) MUSCLE CHEMISTRY AND NEUROPHYSIOLOGY I29 



model for peripheral nerve chemistry and that the application of results obtained with 

 brain-brei must be regarded with caution. 



5. Physical phenomena, accompanying the chemical changes have been a great 

 help in establishing the sequence of events in muscle. Volume change, change of pn, 

 variation of birefringence, of light scattering and change of electrical resistance have 

 been studied with great success, and it is one of the outstanding characteristics of 

 Meyerhof's work that he always was able to make a fruitful correlation between these 

 phenomena and the chemical aspect. In nerve, all these effects — if they exist at all — are 

 probably extremely small. David Hill (personal communication) has been able to 

 detect changes of light scattering and volume changes in certain nerves. This may be 

 the beginning of a new development. But on the whole, — except for action potentials — 

 the nerve does not offer many good points for attack from the physical side. 



The problem of the function of nerve remains, as A. V. Hill^° has stated 17 years 

 ago, intellectually quite a respectable one. For all those who are attracted by it the 

 study of the development of muscle chemistry is a lesson of how to proceed. Otto 

 Meyerhof's lifework with its unique combination of physical and chemical aspects 

 furnishes the pattern which must be followed, if we want to understand what "excita- 

 tion" really means. 



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^ E. Du Bois-Reymond, Monatsber. Berl. Akad., 288 (1859). 



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 A. V. Hill, Muscular activity, Baltimore 1926. 



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' A. Bethe, N aturwissenschaften, 18 (1930) 678. 



8 A. D. Ritchie, Nature (1932) 165. 



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20 V. A. Engelhardt AND M. N. LjUBiMOVA, Nature, 144 (1939) 668. 



21 A. Szent-Gyorgyi and I. Banga, Science, 93 (1941) 158. 



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3" A. V. Hill, Chemical wave transmission in nerve, Cambridge 1932. 



An account of some aspects of our present knowledge in neurophysiology has been 

 given by the author in his book Die Signaliibermittlung im Nerven, Basel 1946. 



Received April i6th, 1949 



