284 THE SO-CALLED SECONDARY ELECTROMOTIVE 



quate to accomplish this, became the subject of a new and unreliable 

 assumption. 



It was coolly explained as constituting- the * essence of electro- 

 tonus/ notwithstanding that I have repeatedly drawn attention to 

 the fact that it was incapable of explaining either the contrast 

 between an- and catelectrotonus or the indifference point. But the 

 actually proved polarisation of the nerve-core, which does admirably 

 explain this contrast as well as the extrapolar spread, is not the 

 essence of electrotonus ! 



Excepting possibly in the case of the fanciful speculations upon 

 the shock of the electrical fish which I have recently treated of 1 

 the abyss of misconception of nature by which the molecular theory 

 is confronted has never been so appallingly displayed. Others 

 may hold as loyal the sacrificium intellectus which abstains from 

 criticising an hypothesis which claims to be sacred, I place it to 

 my credit that I have brought back into the physiology of this 

 department the principles which in natural science are paramount, 

 strict thought and the rejection of error ; and it is nothing to me 

 that du Bois-Reymond, who to-day still idly talks of currents of 

 rest of uninjured muscles, can only describe the result of my 

 sixteen years' work (p. 402) as a ' polemic, which has brought to 

 light more new terms than facts.' 



Those however who in text-books, lectures, and popular writings 

 blindly go on spreading statements and hypotheses which have 

 been refuted, will by so doing place themselves in a position of 

 which one day they will be ashamed. 



3. Investigation of the intrapolar after-currents of Muscles 

 and Nerves. 



We now enter upon the task of investigating the + after-effect 

 discovered by du Bois-Reymond, in a way which may guide us to 

 its elucidation. I repeated du Bois-Reymond's chief experiment so 

 as to obtain an idea of the phenomenon in question ; it then 

 appeared desirable to modify in one respect his method. He 

 placed the leading-in electrodes on one lateral surface of the muscle, 

 the leading-off ones on the other. Under certain assumptions a 



1 Loc. cit. vol. xxvi. p. 483. 



