THE 



LONDON, EDINBURGH, and DUBLIN 



PHILOSOPHICAL MAGAZINE 



AND 



JOURNAL OF SCIENCE. 



SUPPLEMENT to VOL. XXXI. FOURTH SERIES. 



LXX. On the Origin of Muscular Power. By Dr. A. Fick, 

 Professor of Physiology, Zurich; and Dr. J. Wislicenus, 

 Professor of Chemistry, Zurich*. 



IT is now a universally acknowledged fact that muscular ac- 

 tion is brought about by chemical changes alone; and 

 the proposition, that it is by processes of oxidation that the mus- 

 cles are rendered capable of performing work, would be just as 

 little likely to meet with contradiction. But all are not agreed 

 as to what the substance is, which, by oxidation, furnishes the 

 store of actual energy which is capable of being in part trans- 

 muted into mechanical work. Most physiologists and chemists 

 appear to think that the oxidation of albuminoid substances alone 

 can generate muscular power. Even quite recently Playfairf 

 has published a special treatise to prove this hypothesis. The 

 beautiful investigations of J. RankeJ seem also to point in- 

 dubitably in the same direction. In many manuals of physio- 

 logy the proposition in question is laid down as a self-evident 

 principle. The chief reason why it numbers so many adherents 

 may lie in the following reflection made, more or less consciously, 

 by most of them : — The action of the muscle is connected with 

 the destruction of its substance, by far the greater part of which 

 is of an albuminoid nature ; therefore the destruction by oxida- 

 tion of albuminoid bodies is the essential condition of the mus- 

 cle's mechanical action. The fallacy of this line of argument 

 will be immediately apparent if, for instance, we apply it to a lo- 

 comotive. " This machine consists essentially of iron, steel, 

 brass, &c. ; it contains but little coal ; therefore its action must 

 depend on the burning of iron and steel, not on the burning of 

 coal." In like manner it is by no means self-evident that it is 



* Communicated by the Authors, and translated by Professor Wanklyn. 

 t " On the Food of Man in relation to bis useful Work/' read to the 

 Royal Society of Edinburgh, April 3, 1865. 



X Tetanus, a Physiological Study. Leipzig, 1865. 



Phil. Mag. S. 4. No. 212. Suppl. Vol. 31. 2 K 



