HELMHOLTZ IN KONIGSBERG 



able to solve the problem, chiefly because of the short- 

 ness of the nervous tracts in the living animal, and 

 although he doubted the results given by the older 

 physiologists, he thought that the velocity of the 

 nervous impulse must be akin to that of light. In 

 his great text-book he makes use of the phrase, 

 ' Such immeasurable rapidity.' Again, he says, 

 ' We shall probably never attain the power of meas- 

 uring the velocity of nervous action, for we have 

 no opportunity of comparing its propagation through 

 immense space as we have in the case of light.' r 

 Such was the state of opinion when Helmholtz took 

 up the subject. His versatile intellect suggested the 

 method by which the problem could be attacked 

 through the nerves and muscles of a frog, and, as 

 one writer remarks, < he apparently felt as much at 

 home with frogs' nerves and muscles, and with 

 intervals of time of thousands of a second, as he was 

 in after years in discussing the universe and the 

 immense measurements of time and space involved 

 in a consideration of the planets.' 



As already mentioned, Du Bois Reymond was 

 about the same period engaged on his researches on 

 animal electricity. Following Matteucci, but with 

 much finer apparatus and with clearer ideas, he had 

 shown, by means of the galvanometer, and specially- 

 constructed non-polarisable electrodes, that the trans- 

 verse section of a resting muscle is negative to the 



1 Miiller's Physiology, trans, by Baly, vol. i., p. 678. 

 E 



