CHEMICAL PHYSIOLOGY. 39 



and immediate contraction of the various elements. 

 The muscle becomes acid during work, and gives off 

 large quantities of carbonic acid. The disintegration 

 of its albuminous matter seems hardly to be increased 

 immediately, but that of the carbonaceous substances 

 is evident. Muscular exercise does not increase the quan- 

 tity of excreted urea, but it augments that of the carbonic 

 acid exhaled to perhaps tenfold the amount excreted in 

 rest during equal times. The muscle participates in all 

 febrile diseases of the body, and is frequently the seat 

 of idiopathic processes. In typhoid and typhus fever 

 it becomes disorganised in a high degree, losing struc- 

 ture, and assuming a yellow appearance. In fatty 

 degeneration it loses its contractility, and shows fat 

 in a free state amongst changed structure elements. 

 In death from carbonic oxyde it has a red florid colour 

 due to the combination of the poison with its hemato- 

 crystalline ; in tetanus it is spasmodically contracted, 

 changed, and frequently torn ; in hydrophobia it is 

 similarly injured and torn ; in trichiniasis it is the 

 specific seat of a parasite, the trichina spiralis, which 

 does not live in any other tissue. The changes of the 

 muscles in diseases have only just begun to be studied, 

 and cannot fail to be found of the utmost importance. 

 As the muscle during life takes up oxygen from the Dead muscle. 

 blood, besides nutriment of the most varied kind, and 

 renders back to the venous blood carbonic acid, water, 

 and a host of refuse matters, so does the dead muscle, 

 its coagulated myosine notwithstanding, continue some 

 time to breathe, take up oxygen and give out carbonic 

 acid. At last its atoms take a new direction, and 



