Vital and Physical Motion. \ 1 3 



lar contraction was due, not to the black blood having 

 acted as a stimulus, but to the withdrawal of an in- 

 hibitory influence which had served to keep up the 

 state of muscular relaxation as long as certain nerve- 

 centres were duly supplied with red blood. 



And so likewise with the second of the two facts to 

 which I have alluded. I had the good fortune to be 

 present on one occasion when Matteucci was watching 

 the action of strychnia upon the common electric ray of 

 the Mediterranean. I saw very plainly that this action 

 was marked by involuntary electric shocks as well 

 as by involuntary spasms, and I was much struck by 

 what was said by this excellent physiologist in support 

 of the notion thai muscular contraction was attended 

 by a discharge analogous to that of the torpedo, and 

 that there was much in common between the action of 

 the electric organ and the action of the muscles : and, 

 so seeing and hearing, I could not help wondering 

 whether muscular relaxation might not be the con- 

 sequence of the muscular molecules being kept in a 

 state of mutual repulsion by the presence of an electrical 

 charge, and whether the discharge of this charge might 

 not bring about muscular contraction by allowing the 

 attractive force or forces inherent in the physical con- 

 stitution of the muscular molecules to come into 

 play. I could, indeed, bring myself to adopt no other 

 conclusion than this : and thus it was that this experi- 

 ment upon the torpedo proved to be the means of 

 adding not a little strength and definitiveness to the 

 conviction at which I had already arrived respecting 

 vital motion. 



Looking back, I can now see plainly enough that there 

 are not a few faults and shortcomings in the argument 

 by which hitherto I have hoped to bring others to the 



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