ry 
WatTeR ABSORPTION BY MUSCLES AND Soaps 515 
In regard to the effect of acids, 0.7 per cent. NaCl solu- 
tions are more like CaCl, solutions. As I have shown in my 
earlier papers, a muscle absorbs 6 to 8 per cent. of its weight 
of water when immersed for eighteen hours in a 0.7 per cent. 
NaCl solution. If 10 c.c. of one-tenth normal HNO, solution 
are added to 100 c.c. of the NaCl solution, the muscle 
increases about 40 per cent. in weight in the same time. 
Ill 
When a muscle is immersed in a salt solution of a greater 
concentration than 0.7 per cent., it loses water in such a 
solution during the first hour or hours. If, however, it 
remains in such hypertonic solutions for some time, it steadily 
increases in weight, and this the more the greater the con- 
centration (within certain limits) of the solution in which it 
isimmersed. Table III illustrates this paradoxical behavior. 
The row of figures on the left gives the concentration; that 
on the right, the increase in weight of the muscle expressed 
in per cent. of the original weight of the muscle. The 
experiment lasted twenty-four hours. 
TABLE III 
Increase in weight of muscles 
Concentration of in twenty-four hours ex- 
the solution pressed in per cent. of their 
original weight 
1.052 0.7% 
1.40 6.7 
1.75 13.0 
2.10 17.7 
2.45 19.0 
2.80 23.8 
This paradoxical behavior of the muscles is dependent upon 
secondary changes which take place in the muscles when 
allowed to remain for a long time in the hypertonic sodium- 
chloride solutions. I have discussed these changes at length 
in my study of cedema.’ I will only point out in passing 
1 Pfliigers Archiv, Vol. LXXI (1898). 
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