PREFACE. XI 



In the paper of which a translation is introduced into our 

 series of Memoirs, Biedermann extended the same mode of 

 experiment to a striated muscle of the frog. In order to 

 bring about a similar condition of permanent spasm to that 

 which, in the heart of Helix, is produced so easily by mere 

 distension, he availed himself of the action of veratrine, and 

 found that in this, as in the other case, the cathodic contraction 

 is replaced by anodic relaxation, and the anodic contraction 

 by cathodic relaxation. Here, then, an opportunity seemed to 

 be afforded for the first time, of determining experimentally 

 whether electrical and functional electrotonus occur under 

 the same conditions whether, as the opening contraction 

 corresponds with the anodic after-effect (of which, according 

 to Hering, positive polarisation is but the expression), the 

 cathodic break-relaxation is marked by a cathodic after-effect, 

 which, although of opposite sign, i.e. positive, as regards the 

 condition of the cathode itself, is of the same sign galvano- 

 scopically. To ascertain whether it was so or not, Biedermann 

 prepared the sartorius by subjecting one end of it to the action 

 of veratrine, leaving the other intact, and then induced cathe- 

 lectrotonus in the poisoned, that is, tonic end, leading a battery- 

 current through the whole riband for a couple of seconds. The 

 poisoned end was at once thrown into veratrine spasm and the 

 cathode became negative; but when (after compensating) the 

 current was again closed, its after-effect was in the opposite 

 direction, that is, in the direction of the exciting current. In 

 other words, relaxation of the veratrine spasm was, as was 

 expected, accompanied by diminution of the negativity which 

 is its galvanoscopic expression. When the same observation 

 was made with the modifying current in the opposite direction, 

 that is, with the anode at the veratrine end, it was similarly 

 found that a current led through during spasm was reversed, 

 that is, that the anode became positive. 



The general conclusion derived by Biedermann from these 

 experiments is that the state of muscle varies, not merely 

 between the state of excitation and the normal, or unexcited 



