Matteucci’s Lectures on Living Beings. 397 
the chemical actions of nutrition; inasmuch as by means of the 
latter, and of repose, this force is reproduced and accumulates in 
the nervous system. Interrupt for a certain time the sanguineous 
circulation in a muscle, and soon this becomes incapable of con- 
tracting ; but with the return of blood, the muscular force revives. 
In animals, where circulation and respiration are very active, the 
development of muscular force is more considerable. 
heat and the nervous force. Of all chemical actions of which 
the animal is the seat, the only one which we perfectly know, 
and which we have even measured, is that which produces car- 
bonic acid. On the average, man converts and exhales, in the 
form of carbonic acid, ten to fifteen grammes of carbon per hour.’ 
Matteucci, in continuing this subject, adduces the calculation 
a man in the course of a journey consumes ;'; the quantity 
of carbon required for a locomotive to carry him the same jour- 
hey; and after other observations, concludes that the ‘work 
produced from nervous force derived from a certain chemical ac- 
fon, is much greater than that which this same action produces 
when converted into heat.’ 
In the Comptes Rendus for the 15th of March, 1847, Matteucci 
has given the following summary of his hypothetical views re- 
Specting the nervous force : 
Ist. The nervous fluid is produced by the chemical actions of 
nutrition. 
2d. This fluid, developed principally in the muscles, is diffu- 
sed there, and being endowed with a repulsive force between its 
ting like the electric fluid, retains the elements of i BH 
ore In a state of repulsion analogous to that presented by elec~- 
Webisden . : 
- When this nervous fluid ceases to be free in the muscle, 
the elements of the muscular fibre mutually attract each other, 
a8 we see happens in cadaveric rigidity. 
Ath, This nervous fluid enters continually into the nerves, and 
from them passes to the brain, assuming in these bodies a new 
State which is no longer that of the free fluid; in this manner it 
Passes from the muscle to the nerve. According to the quantity 
of this fluid which ceases to be free in the muscle, the contrac- 
strong. 
10n 1s more or less 
