262 THE ADRENAL, SYSTEM AND VASOMOTOR FUNCTIONS. 



Source of muscular energy: an oxidation process in the 

 muscular contractile elements the chemical energy of which, after 

 conversion into mechanical energy, supplies the muscle during any 

 stage of contraction or retraction with the power-to-do-work required 

 to sustain either of the latter. 



This oxidation process is subject to fluctuations of activity, 

 and occurs as the result of a reaction between two physiological 

 compounds: first, myosinogen, i.e., Hood-plasma containing 

 various carbohydrates and immanent in the muscle-fiber, as a 

 potential; second, an oxidizing substance, also contained in the 

 blood-plasma, but in that of the arteries, as reagent. 



2. As to mechanical process: variations in the caliber of the 

 muscular vessels give rise to corresponding variations in the pro- 

 portion of oxidizing substance admitted to the myosinogen in the 

 muscular fiber and to correspondingly marked fluctuations in the 

 activity of the oxidation process. 



The myosinogen is stored in the contractile disks while the 

 oxidizing plasma fills the interstitial disks, and an opening between 

 the two probably exists through which the oxidizing plasma is 

 forced when the impulse-wave adjusts the muscle to the required 

 contraction, the quantity of energy produced being thus simulta- 

 neously adjusted to the needs of that contraction. 



THE OXIDIZING SUBSTANCE AND THE MOTOR NERVES IN 

 THEIR RELATION TO GLANDULAR SECRETION. 



In the foregoing pages we have sought to elucidate the 

 manner in which the voluntary muscular system could be en- 

 dowed with vasomotor functions. The result has suggested 

 that such a system as the sympathetic does not exist as a 

 separate entity, and that the double chain of ganglia on each 

 side of the spinal column, and those situated in the head, 

 thorax, abdomen, and pelvis, their intercommunicating nerves 

 and plexuses are, in reality, but subdivisions of the motor 

 system. We have ascertained that a motor nerve was a vaso- 

 dilator or constrictor only in the sense that it adjusted the 

 organ's functions to a specific degree of activity, and simul- 

 taneously adjusted the lumen of its vessels to the needs of 

 this functional activity in order to admit precisely the amount 

 of blood i.e., of oxidizing serum required. Obviously, each 



