OF THE MUSCULAR sf STEM IN GENERAL. 415 



other; on the contrary, they disappear when the muscular 

 fasciculi are extended in the dead subject. They disappear 

 entirely when the cadaverous stiffness has disappeared. 



659. Some physiologists, deceived by incorrect observa- 

 tions, or governed by hypothetical views, have admitted false 

 or entirely arbitrary opinions as to the intimate texture of the 

 muscular fibre:* thus a great number of physiologists and 

 mechanicians have admitted that the muscular fibre is hollow, 

 and that it consists of a series of ovoid vesicles, or of rhom- 

 boidal cavities, elongated in a state of relaxation, but widened 

 and globular when the. muscles are in a state of contraction. 

 Several have considered the muscular fibre to be hollow and 

 continuous to the nerves. Many others have considered it as 

 hollow, vascular and injectable, either as being formed solely 

 of small arteries or as consisting of very minute vessels inter- 

 vening between the small arteries and small veins. Others 

 have described these interior cavities, both vesicles and ca- 

 nals, as spongy and.cellular. . Some have admitted transversal, 

 nervous or other fibres, either intended to retain the blood in 

 the fibre, or to close its' dilated canal and to shorten it by this 

 mechanism. Others again have imagined the fibres to be a 

 spiral canal around a thread which is incapable of extension; 

 While others have supposed it to be twisted like a thread of flax 

 or hemp, c. 



It may be objected to all these a-ssertions that the muscular 

 fibre, when examined with good optical instruments, appears 

 to be the result of a linear series of opaque globules, united by 

 a medium more transparent, but that nothing is found to indi- 

 cate that these globules are vesicles; that when the muscular 

 contraction takes place, wrinkles are perceived to form, 'but 

 these flexuosities are effaced as soon as the muscle is relaxed, 

 no change at all, however, occurs in the figure of the globules; 

 that in insects, in which no vessels exist, there are nevertheless 

 muscular fibres which' consequently can not be the continua- 

 tion of them; "that injection may indeed swell the muscles by 

 infiltrating between the fibres, but that it does not penetrate 



* Haller, Ekmento'pJiysiolog. lib. xi, sect, i, et iii. torn. iv. 

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