

THE OXIDIZING SUBSTANCE AND MYOSINOGEN. 239 



through exacerbations of a continuous physico-chemical re- 

 action of which its tissues are the seat while in the passive 

 state, be able to suddenly awaken the active state is as clear. 

 When the muscle is in the passive state, the transformation 

 of energy incident upon the continuous reaction manifests it- 

 self as heat; while, when it is active, it manifests itself as 

 greater heat plus mechanical work. Armand Gautier has as- 

 certained that a working muscle took up nine times more blood 

 than a resting one, and that the ratio of carbonic acid given 

 off by it or transmitted to the venous blood was nearly one 

 hundred times greater. This raises the question as to whether 

 the conversion of chemical energy into the mechanical work 

 upon which contraction depends must first be transformed into 

 heat energy. A study of this question by Professor Gautier, 

 based on Carnot's investigations, showed that, just as in a 

 voltaic cell in which the chemical potential at once appears 

 under the form of electricity without passing through the 

 intermediate state of heat, so can intramuscular chemical 

 energy become directly transformed into work. Indeed, he 

 found that 65 C. (149 F.) would represent the final tempera- 

 ture of an active muscle, were it otherwise, and reached the 

 conclusion that "a muscle contracts and works owing to a 

 direct transformation of the chemical potential into elastic 

 tension, without ever requiring the intervention of the heat 

 which theoretically accounts for internal combustions." 

 These facts seem to us to warrant the deductions: 



1. That the mechanical energy utilized by living voluntary 

 muscles in the passive state is converted chemical energy, the result 

 of a reaction in the muscular contractile elements during which 

 various compounds, mainly hydrocarbons, are oxidized. 



2. That active muscular work is the result of an exacerbation 

 of the activity of this mechanical process, attended with a direct 

 transformation of the passive potential: i.e., irritability, into the 

 active potential: i.e., contractility. 



The suggestion that the reaction occurs in the living con- 

 tractile elements themselves cannot, for obvious reasons, be 

 demonstrated experimentally. But if we associate Foster's 

 comparison of a living muscle to "a number of fine, trans- 

 parent, membranous tubes containing blood-plasma" with our 



