PHENOMENA OF MUSCLE. 241 



of contraction liberated from the nerve flows, there appears 

 to me to be a contradiction which is the more inexplicable from 

 the fact that he described the structure of both muscles used by 

 him, and especially mentioned the circumstance that each half 

 of the muscle received its own special nerve supply. 



II. 



Du Bois-Reymond informs us at the end of his treatise that he 

 was acquainted with positive polarisation of muscle long- before the 

 issue of the first volume of his ' Researches' (i 848), and that from it he 

 was led to the conception of the electromotive phenomena of nerve 

 and muscle. From positive polarisation of muscle he was led to 

 a similar conclusion with regard to the intrapolar tract of nerve, and 

 a few years later he actually discovered the intrinsic polarisation of 

 nerve which before he had only assumed theoretically. 



' In so far as no other reasonable explanation of positive polarisation 

 could be given/ continues du Bois-Reymond, * excepting that which 

 regards it as due to the directing of already existing forces, the 

 evidence obtained of this polarisation is at the same time serviceable 

 in another way. In my eyes it afforded and will continue to afford 

 proof of the presence of electromotive forces in uninjured nerves 

 proof which in the absence of a natural transverse section of a nerve 

 was otherwise lacking. The evidence of the existence of such forces 

 in muscle, obtained by carefully testing the natural transverse 

 section of muscle, is also strengthened by it.' Hence, in internal 

 positive polarisation, according to du Bois-Reymond's own assertion, 

 we are expected to see the origin and mainstay of his whole theory 

 of nerve- and muscle-currents. Here again I find myself com- 

 pelled, by means of a series of experimental examples, to show that 

 intrapolar positive polarisation in du Bois-Reymond's sense cannot 

 be demonstrated. 



I begin with an experiment in which the stimulating electrodes 

 were placed on the muscle in the same manner as they were in 

 du Bois-Reymond's experiments, although this method of leading- 

 in the current is not generally to be recommended for reasons given 

 above. Instead, however, of a muscle divided by a tendinous inter- 

 section, I used a curarised sartorius, which, according to Aeby's re- 

 searches, is in most cases though not invariably really monomerous, 

 which matter I discussed in my twelfth communication 1 (see p. 



1 [Not included in the present series of translations. See Preface. ED.] 



R 



