MUSCULAR MOTION. 357 



menon, however, can only last a comparatively short time; 

 for a muscle soon dies, and runs into a state of mortification, 

 after its vascular and nervous communications have been cut 

 off. Physiologists have entertained very different opinions on 

 the causes of the muscles contracting, or on muscular irritabi- 

 lity, as it is called. Some have supposed it to be an attribute 

 of the muscle itself;* others, that it depended on the blood ves- 

 sels, which, by bringing a greater afflux of fluids into its inte- 

 rior, between its fasciculi and fibres, obliged the two latter to 

 take a more flexuous course; and others, on the nerves.f Any 

 decision on this point is inconclusive, because it is well known 

 that perfect muscular action requires a healthy state of the 

 muscle, and an uninterrupted nervous and sanguineous influence; 

 so that it seems to be a result from the combination of three 

 systems, more than an attribute of one alone.f 



MM. Dumas and Prevost say, that in consequence of the final 

 nervous ramifications crossing the muscular fibres at right an- 

 gles to them, and parallel with one another, the Galvanic current 

 which passes through these ramifications, causes the latter to 

 approach each other reciprocally; whereby the muscular fibres 

 to which the ramifications are fixed, are thrown into wrinkles. 

 It is clear, from this theory, that the muscular fibres themselves 

 are destitute of the power of contraction, and that they are only 

 the frame-work upon which the Galvanic batteries of the ner- 

 vous system are displayed. 



There are no muscles which have not the power of contract- 

 ing some time after apparent death, and this phenomenon fre- 

 quently continues for an hour; it is uncommon for it to cease 

 with the apparent extinction of life. This irritability is of dif- 

 ferent durations in the different muscles; it is first lost in the 

 left ventricle of the heart; then in the large intestines; after- 

 wards in the small, and in the stomach; and then in the blad- 

 der; then in the right ventricle, the iris, and in the voluntary 

 muscles, of which those of the trunk die first; those of the in- 



* Haller, Physio!. 



t Legallois sur le principe de la vie. 



t Meckcl, Anat. Gen.; from Barzellotti, Esame di alcuni moderne teorie inter- 

 no alia causa prossima della contrazione moscolare, 1796. 



The recent visitation of cholera in Europe and in this country has given many 

 persons an opportunity of examining this singular fact. 



