82 



BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS 



which thought further suggests that toxicity of that supply 

 of material would result in pathological disturbance of the 

 muscular structures to which the nerves affected were 

 communicated. Thus, it might be inferred that such a 

 disease as rheumatism might, and most likely does, arise 

 from a contaminated, or toxic, supply of neural excretion, 

 or, as we contend, nutritive plasma, and that the pain and 

 stiffness characterising that disease are due to the convey- 

 ance, or circulation, of a certain materies morbi from the 

 nerve endings into the muscular structures involved. 



FIG. 17. NERVE-ENDING IN MUSCULAR FIBRE OF A LIZARD (Lacerta 

 viridis), ACCORDING TO KUHNE. (Highly magnified.) 



a, end-plate seen edgeways ; b, from the surface, s, s, sarcolemma ; p, p, expansion 

 of axis-cylinder. In b the expansion of the axis-cylinder appears as a clear 

 network branching from the divisions of the medullated fibre. 



Rheumatism will, therefore, most likely be found to be,, 

 and we think is, a disease primarily of the nervous system, 

 and not of the blood, the blood becoming secondarily 

 affected through, or by the removal into it of, this toxic 

 matter, through the agency of the lymphatics returning 

 from the affected muscles, or by direct imbibition of the 

 tainted material, or materies morbi, by the blood-vessels 

 supplying them. But this is a digression into the patho- 

 logical aspect of the subject of circulation which can be 

 more consistently dealt with when we reach the clinico- 

 pathological stage; we shall, therefore, resume the study of 

 neural circulation, extra- and intra-. But the extra-neural 

 circulation having already been considered in some detail 



