194 



SECONDARY ELECTROMOTIVE PHENOMENA IN 



The following table gives an example of this behaviour : 



SEPTEMBER n, 1855. 



Muscle Multiplier, Platinum Electrodes in saturated solution of common salt, 

 Common Salt wedge-pads with albuminous films. Twenty Groves. Time of closure 

 about i". A minute and a-half between the experiments. 



The strength of the primary current was not noted, but the 

 resistance of the immobilised tetanised muscle, according to my 

 experiments, diminishes a little x . 



My note books mention no precautions to ensure that tetanus 

 should always last the same length of time, and that the current 

 should commence an equal time after the beginning of the tetanus. 

 With the knowledge and means we now possess it would naturally 

 be easy to obtain much completer numbers than the above. As 

 they stand they appear to leave no doubt regarding the thesis I 

 have propounded. 



I have made similar experiments with negative polarisation. On 

 certain grounds I thought that this polarisation would not be altered 

 by the state of activity of the muscle. On account of the weakness 

 of the positive polarisation subtracted from it, it should therefore 

 appear stronger. Unfortunately, in testing whether it be so or not, 

 we meet with the difficulty that it requires a time of closure of at 

 least 10" to obtain adequate negative polarisation. As tetanus 

 begins earlier and must last longer than the polarising current, the 

 muscle is affected to such an extent that one generally succeeds in 

 seeing nothing but a rapid subsidence of all action. However, I 



1 Untersuchungen liber thierische Elektricitat, vol. ii. part i, 1849, pp. 74 ff. 

 When this sheet of my work was printed, Helmholtz' researches, ' Uber die Warmeent- 

 wickelung bei der Muskelaction' (in Joh. M tiller's Archiv fiir Anatomic, &c. 1848, pp. 

 144 ff.) had not yet appeared. I should otherwise have had grounds for considering 

 the possibility that the diminution of resistance which I had observed depended on 

 the action of warming the muscle. I discovered the acidification of muscle by con- 

 traction much later. 



