MUSCLES, NERVES, AND ELECTRICAL ORGANS. 211 



resistance in the nerve l . It gives a measure of the improvement 

 of methods that Griinhagen obtained a result for which I had 

 sought in vain in October 1844, although my arrangements were 

 faultless according to the knowledge we then possessed 2 . 



Hermann, who several years later made an independent discovery 

 of Griinhagen's facts, showed that it was not on account of 

 diminished resistance, but of an electromotive force aroused in the 

 intrapolar tract, which he calls the ' polarisation Increment V 



This is hardly the occasion for testing Hermann's theory of the 

 phenomenon, for the positive polarisation of the intrapolar tract 

 will render it necessary for him to make some changes in his con- 

 ceptions. The fact in itself has for us this significance, that if the 

 positive polarisation during the duration of the polarising current 

 in a nerve is strengthened by tetanus, this will probably also be the 

 case with the positive after-current. There would then exist 

 between the secondary electromotive actions of muscles and those 

 of nerves this difference, that the condition of activity weakens 

 the positive after-current in muscles and strengthens it in nerves. 



20. On the Secondary Electromotive Phenomena of 

 Electrical Organs. 



I have already given an account of the secondary electromotive 

 phenomena in the electrical organs of the Malapterurus in my 

 * Experimentalkritik der Entladungshypothese V What I have 

 already said shows how I was led to these experiments. The 

 agreement between the polarisation-currents of muscle and nerve 

 and those of the electrical organs, which I pointed out in my lecture 

 on the West African Malapterurus in January, i858 5 , is now 

 recognised. 



A strip of the fish cut in the direction of its length exhibits 6 a 

 secondary electromotive action like muscle or nerve. With medium 



1 Henle's u. Pfeufer's Zeitschrift fur rationelle Medicin. 3 series, 1869, vol. xxxvi. 

 p. 140. 



2 TJntersuchungen fiber thierische Elektricitat, vol. ii. part i. 1849, P- 444- 



3 Pfliiger's Archiv, 1872, vol. vi. p. 561 ; 1873, vol. vii. p. 323 ff . ; 1874, vol. viii. 

 p. 264; 1875, vol. x. p. 215 ; 1876, vol. xii. p. 151 ; 1879, vol. xix. p. 416; 1881, 

 vol. xxiv. p. 246; Handbuch der Physiologic, vol. ii. 1878, p. 165; Die Ergebnisse 

 neuerer Untersuchungen, etc., Sep. Abdr. aus der Ziiricher Vierteljahrsschrift, 1878, 

 p. 32. 



4 Gesammelte Abhandlungen, vol. ii. p. 718. 



5 Monatsberichte, 1858, p. 106. 



[Here the Multiplier was the instrument used. ED.] 



P 2, 



