248 ON THE SOURCE OF MUSCULAR. POWER. 



ON THE SOURCE OF MUSCULAR POWER 



BY EDWARD FRANKLAND, PH.D., F.R.S. 



The following pages comprise the most important parts of a lecture 

 lately delivered, by Professor Frankland, at the Royal Institution. 

 The subject is one which has, for some time past, attracted the atten- 

 tion of chemists and physiologists, as it had become evident that our 

 old ideas on the matter were incorrect. 



Mr. Frankland has, it appears, fully proved this by actual experi- 

 ment ; and the paper is so interesting, both to chemists and physiolo- 

 gists, as well as in an economic point of view, that we present a full 

 extract to the readers of the Canadian Journal. H. C. 



What is the source of muscular power ? Twenty years ago, if this 

 question had been asked, there were but few philosophers who would 

 have hesitated to reply, " The source of muscular power is that pe- 

 culiar force which is developed by living animals, and which we term 

 the vital force ! " but the progress of scientific discovery has ren- 

 dered the view implied in such an answer so utterly untenable that, 

 at the present moment, no one possessing any knowledge of physical 

 science would venture to return such a reply. We now know that an 

 animal, however high its organization may be, can no more generate 

 an amount of force capable of moving a grain of sand, than a stone 

 can fall upwards or a locomotive drive a train without fuel. All that 

 such an animal can do is to liberate that store of force, or potential 

 energy, which is locked up in its food. It is the chemical change 

 which food suffers in the body of an animal that liberates the previ- 

 ously pent-up forces of that food, which now make their appearance 

 in the form of actual energy — as heat and mechanical motion. 



From food, and food alone, comes the matter of which the animal 

 body is built up ; and from food alone come all the different kinds of 

 physical force which an animal is capable of manifesting. 



The two chief forms of force thus manifested are Heat and Mus- 

 cular motion or 7nechanical work, and these have been almost univer- 

 sally traced to. two distinct sources — the heat to the oxidation of the 

 food, and the mechanical worlc to the oxidation of the muscles. 



