74 THE ACTIVE FORCES OF LIVING ORGANISMS 



Views of 

 French 

 physio- 

 logists on 

 eleotro- 

 motory 

 action. 



the loose character of the compounds comprising the 

 various kinds of tissue, are so entirely favourable to 

 chemical action that we may suppose the ether 

 permeating them to be continually in a state of 

 vibration. This we might infer from the existence of 

 glandular, cutaneous, retinal, and other currents with 

 which physiological research has made us familiar. 

 Knowing that these currents exist in the body, not as 

 solitary or haphazard events, but as regular concomi- 

 tants of functional action, there are grounds for 

 supposing, as we have already pointed out, that the 

 ether may at times play the part of a conducting 

 medium in many of those forms of chemical action in 

 which, as far as one is aware, no nervous cells or 

 filaments intervene in a direct manner. We are the 

 more justified in assuming this to be the case, since 

 the view that the passage of electrical currents, 

 especially the faradaic, through the tissues will cause 

 chemical action is fully admitted by specialists and 

 members of the medical profession in general. Some 

 noted French physiologists, as is shown by the pas- 

 sage quoted below,* have long been of opinion that 



* Letourneau, ' Biology,' p. 213 : ' To these conditions, abeady 

 so favourable to the osmotic exchanges, are added electro-motory 

 actions. This exceedingly interesting point of the physiology of 

 the capillaries has been elucidated by M. Becquerel' ('M^moires 

 et Comptes Eendus de 1' Academic des Sciences,' from 1867 to 

 1870) ' in a series of important papers. If by means of a voltaic 

 pile we decompose water contained in a vessel divided into two 

 compartments by a membrane, we see the level rise in the 

 negative compartment. There is, therefore, material transport 

 from the positive pole to the negative pole. Something analogous 



