(HAP. iv ELECTROMOTIVE ACTION IN MUSCLE 321 



Soon, however, in spite of innumerable labours and discoveries 

 in this well-worked field, a marked contradiction asserted itself 

 between the sum of theoretical and experimental data, and the 

 almost total ignorance of their significance for the function of 

 the tissues involved : here we are not yet emancipated from the 

 stage of more or less well-founded conjecture. In striking COLD.-. 

 trast, on the other hand, is the electrical development in the 

 living organs of those wonderful fishes, armed with powerful 

 batteries, which afford a solitary illustration of the manner in 

 which from insignificant beginnings in muscle or gland cells, 

 where the electromotive action is hard to demonstrate, organs 

 have been developed whose function as powerful electrical weapons 

 of attack and protection is unmistakably attested. The import- 

 ance of these facts cannot be neglected, and the interest manifested 

 in the department of electro-physiology now before us is the more 

 legitimate, since the fundamental researches of Matteucci, du 

 Bois-Eeymond, L. Hermann, and others provide a basis which is 

 not merely a satisfactory starting-point for future labours, but 

 from exactness of method guarantees the true interpretation of 

 all such observations. Notwithstanding the importance which 

 attaches to the historical development of the subject, it cannot be 

 entered on here, and indeed could only be abbreviated from the 

 masterly review given by du Bois-Keymond in his classical 

 " Untcrsuchungen." 



We shall therefore proceed at once to the description of 

 electromotive action in the " resting " muscle. 



I. CURRENT OF EEST IN MUSCLE 



Between 1840-1843 it was discovered almost simultaneously 

 by C. Matteucci and E. du Bois-Eeymond that isolated, striated 

 muscle, under certain conditions, exhibited pronounced and 

 regular electromotive activity. This opened up a vast field 

 of electro -physiology, the further investigation of which will 

 always stand out as an admirable achievement of du Bois- 

 Eeymond, after whom Hermann has made the greatest con- 

 tributions. If a long strip is cut out of the middle of a frog's 

 muscle with parallel fibres and regular structure (e.g. sartorius, 

 gracilis, semimembranosus), a so-called muscle-prism, or muscle 

 cylinder, is obtained, where two end -surfaces are formed by 



Y 



