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Physiology. == “Erperimental researches on the analogy between 
swelling (unbibition) and mixing.” By J. R. Karz. (Commu- 
nicated by Prof. C. A. PEKELHARING).: 
, 
(Communicated in the meeting of November 26, 1910). 
Among the chapters of General Physiological Chemistry there are 
few which invite to a further study so much as that on swelling. 
Partly, because so little is known and understood as yet, about this 
phenomenon already noticed in ancient times, and also because the 
knowledge of the laws of swelling and the explanation of the imbi- 
bition process prove to be of fundamental significance for physiology, 
pharmacodynamics and preparative physiological chemistry. 
Kor physiology, because the protoplasm and the cellnucleus (which 
together form the material substratum which is the seat of life) are 
built up of a system of imbibing bodies and = interposed liquids. 
Many phenomena of life are associated with the motion of water 
from those solid bodies to the surrounding liquids (or reversedly) 
and between those bodies mutually. And it has often been tried to 
attribute to those water displacements a fundamental significance by 
making them the basis of an explanation of those processes of life. 
So for instance, in the theory of the muscular contraction of ENGEL- 
MANN), who, guided by extended morphological researches as to the 
changes in the contracting muscle, has tried to demonstrate that the 
transformator by which the chemical energy of the metabolism in 
the musele is converted into mechanical power, consists of a system 
of imbibing bodies and acts by displacement of water between these 
bodies mutually. “During the contraction the anisotropous layer swells 
owing to imbibition of water which it derives from the isotropous layers 
with which it comes into contact. Each anisotropous layer is, so 
far as the muscular fibre extends, provided at both sides with a 
laver from which it can draw water, which it can again return 
when the contraction ceases.” *) 
By means of this hypothesis many facts which are noticed in the 
contraction of the muscle are explained qualitatively, and ENGuLMANN 
demonstrated by his well-known violin string pattern that the theory 
can also account, more or less, for the form of the line which 
1) Summarized in his Croonian Lecture, Proc. Roy. Soc. vol 57, p. 411-433. 
2) PEKELHARING (Voordrachten over Weefselleer, p 398) thus summarises 
IENGELMANN’S views. 
