and Laboratory Methods. 219^ 



GENERAL PHYSIOLOGY. 



RAYMOND PEARL, University of Michigan. 



Books and Papers for Review should be Sent to Raymond Pearl, Zoological Laboratory, 

 University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Mich. 



Lee, F. S., and Salant, W. The Action of Alco- The method of experimentation used 

 hoi on Muscle. Anier. Jour. Physiol. 8: 6i- in this work was to ligate one hind leg 

 ^ ■ of a frog and then inject into the dor- 



sal lymph sac or the stomach a quantity of a solution of ethyl alcohol in distilled 

 water. The alcohol thus entered the circulation and reached all parts of the 

 body except one hind leg. The non-alcoholized leg was immediately amputated 

 and its gastrocnemius prepared in the usual way for stimulation. In all cases 

 the muscle itself was stimulated by induction shocks until completely exhausted, 

 the contractions being recorded on a slow drum. In twenty to seventy-five min- 

 utes (majority, forty-five minutes) the frog was killed and the alcoholized gas- 

 trocnemius prepared and stimulated just as the normal muscle had been. The 

 rate of absorption of the alcohol was found to vary greatly in difterent individ- 

 uals, so that the amount of solution injected into the lymph sac or the stomach 

 does not precisely determine the relative amount of alcohol which the muscle 

 shall receive. The strength of the solution was more important, strong solutions 

 producing specifically different effects from weak. 



In small quantities (.03 c. c. of 10 per cent, alcohol per gram of frog) alcohol 

 had no observable effect on the muscle. In medium quantity (e. g., 40 parts by 

 weight of pure alcohol to 1000 parts of body weight) alcohol has a favorable 

 action. The muscle is able to contract more quickly, relax more quickly, make 

 a larger number of contrctions and perform a larger amount of work in a given 

 time. The working time of the muscle — /'. <?., the time before fatigue occurs — 

 is longer. The action of the alcohol is shown by experiments on curarised frogs 

 to be directly on the muscle protoplasm and not on the intra-muscular nerve tis- 

 sue. A large quantity of alcohol has an unfavorable action on muscle, its effect 

 being essentially the reverse of that produced by medium quantities of the drug. 



R. p. 



Atwater, W.O.,and Benedict, F.G. An Experi- I" this paper the authors give a com- 



mental Inquiry Regarding the Nutritive plete report of their work on the nutri- 



Value of Alcohol. Natl. Acad. Sci. 8: ^. , r i i i rr^. i u 



Sixth Mem., 231-397, 1902. tive value of alcohol. The work has 



been carried on for a number of years 

 and preliminary reports of parts of the results have already been published. 

 The experiments were all conducted with healthy, adult men as subjects and the 

 general method followed in the experiments was to study quantitatively and pre- 

 cisely by means of the " respiration calorimeter " the metabolism of matter and 

 energy in the human body, when a moderate amount of alcohol formed a regu- 

 lar portion of the diet. 



The amount of alcohol given per day to the subjects during the course of 



