190 



BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS 



Functional activity of the muscular tissues is always 

 necessary to maintain their nutrition, while disuse entails 

 atrophy of their sarcous element, and finally of their 

 interstitial element also, the lapsed raison d'etre of the 

 existence of the proper muscular elements ultimately 

 leading to their entire disappearance which state is 



FIG. 67. CAPILLARY VESSELS OF MUSCLE. Moderately magnified. (E. A. S.) 



represented by that singularly impressive disease known 

 as myopathy the subject of which ultimately becomes 

 literally " a living skeleton," bereft of every texture 

 dependent on systemic innervation and nutrition, and a 

 monument of sympathetically innervated and supported 

 organisation, in which, the once presiding psychic energy 

 is pent up in helpless solitude and isolation, amid the 

 decaying, and ultimately ruinous, neuronal remains, of 

 the cerebral and higher systemic centres. 



