AN ELECTRO-CHEMICAL THEORY OF NORMAL AND 

 CERTAIN PATHOLOGICAL PROCESSES. 



By G. W. CRILE, M.D. 

 {Read April 23, 192 1.) 



That electro-chemical processes play an important role in living 

 processes has long been held by bio-chemists and bio-physicists. 



Du Bois Reymond held that the action current is an electric 

 current; and Crehore and Williams have put forward strong evi- 

 dence in favor of the identity of the action current and electricty. 



Burdon Sanderson demonstrated that motor plants such as 

 venus' fly trap and the sensitive plant show electric variations during 

 their specific response to stimulation. Waller extended these obser- 

 vations and called these electric variations " blaze currents of 

 action." Bose'has found evidence of the identity of vegetable and 

 animal activity, and having demonstrated by most ingenious ex- 

 periments that the activities of plants are attended by electrical 

 phenomena he concludes that electricity plays an important role in 

 vital phenomena. 



Piper showed that sound waves originate an electric current in 

 the auditory nerve of fish ; and Einthoven and Jolly confirmed the 

 discovery made by Holmgren in 1866 that when light falls on the 

 retina, an electric current is produced in the optic nerve. 



Gotch and Horsley have shown that during electric stimulation 

 of the cortex, causing muscular action of the leg, a sustained 

 electromotive force is present in the spinal cord during the con- 

 tinuance of the stimulation. Not only did they demonstrate an 

 electric wave, but they were able to pick out the conduction paths 

 in the spinal cord over which this wave travelled, showing that the 

 current found its way along the intricate pathway from the cortex 

 to the muscles, passing over the various synapses with accuracy. 

 Gotch and Horsley also demonstrated a persistent negative variation 

 in the cord during electric stimulation of the Rolandic area. 



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