CHAP. XIII. CONCLUSION. 181 



In regard to the nervous tissue, this can also 

 be shewn to possess the same electrical characters 

 as the muscular tissue; and this fact shews that 

 they are evidently due to one and the same cause, 

 viz. nutrition. Whatever remarks have been made 

 in regard to the muscular tissue, may also be 

 applied to the nervous tissue respecting its electrical 

 condition; but I have not been enabled to satisfy 

 my mind that any electric force is evolved in the 

 nerve during nerve action, as is the case with the 

 muscles during muscular contraction. Dn Bois 

 Eeymond, however, states, that he has been enabled, 

 under certain conditions, to obtain an increase as 

 well as a decrease of the so-called nerve current. My 

 experiments, on the other hand, shew a decrease, but 

 no increase. The . supposition that nerve force is 

 similar to current force, is certainly not borne out by 

 my own investigations; at the same time there is 

 every reason for considering it as a polar force, from 

 its intimate connection which may be shewn to exist 

 with other forms of polar force, as in the electric 

 fish, for example. The questions which physiologists 

 wiU have to decide appear to me to be reduced 

 to the two following: 1st, Is the electric condition 

 of the nerve merely a condition necessary for 

 the manifestation of nerve action ? or, ^ndly. Is the 

 electric force converted as it were into nerve force 

 during nerve action? Now if the decrease in the 

 nerve current, which I have observed to take place 

 under these circumstances, be due to a loss of the 



