on muscular Motion , 
21 
any chemical processes hitherto instituted, in such manner as 
to allow of a recombination into their former state. The com- 
position of these substances appears to be naturally of transient 
duration, and the attractions of the elementary materials which 
form the gross substances, are so loose and unsettled, that 
they are all decomposed without the intervention of any agent, 
merely by the operation of their own elementary parts on each 
other. 
An extensive discussion of the chemical properties attaching 
to the matter of muscle would be a labour unsuited to this 
occasion ; I should not, however, discharge my present duty, 
if I omitted to say, that all such investigations can only be 
profitable when effected by simple processes, and when made 
upon the raw materials of the animal fabric, such, perhaps, as 
the albumen of eggs, and the blood. But, until by synthetical 
experiments the peculiar substances of animals are composed 
from what are considered to be elementary materials, or the 
changes of organic secretion imitated by art, it cannot be hoped 
that any determinate knowledge should be established upon 
which the physiology of muscles may be explained. Such 
researches and investigations promise, however, the most pro- 
bable ultimate success, since the phenomena are nearest allied 
to those of chemistry, and since all other hypotheses have, in 
their turns, proved unsatisfactory. 
Facts and Experiments tending to ■ support and illustrate the pre- 
ceding Argument . 
An emaciated horse was killed by dividing the medulla spinalis, 
and the large blood-vessels under the first bone of the sternum. 
