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XXI. On the Elementary Structure of the Muscular Fibre of Animal and Organic Life. 
By Frederic C. Skey, Esq. F.R.S. Assistant Surgeon to St. Bartholomew s Hospital. 
Received June 8, — Read June 15, 1837. 
The volume of the Transactions of the Royal Society for the year 1817 contains a 
paper which formed the subject of the Croonian Lecture for that year by Sir Everard 
Home, in which he endeavours to prove the identity of the muscular filaments with 
the globules of the blood. 
To the above paper is appended a plate which exhibits an ultimate muscular fila- 
ment composed of a string of globules, marked by lateral indentations corresponding 
to each globule. 
It was inferred by Sir Everard Home, from the experiments of Mr. Bauer, which 
appear to have furnished the material for the paper, that an ultimate muscular fila- 
ment consists of a string of globules of the blood, estimated by Capt. Kater at the 
diameter of about the -^-gVo-th part of an inch. 
This opinion of the composition of muscular fibre, which has been, according to 
Dutrochet, confirmed by the authorities of France, viz. Beclard, Edwards, Prevost, 
Dumas, and himself, was first opposed by Messrs. Hodgkin and Lister, whose re- 
searches on the subject were published in the year 1832, in an Appendix to the trans- 
lation by the former gentleman of Dr. Edwards’s work, De l’lnfluence des Agens 
Physiques sur la Vie. 
These authorities were the first to deny the existence of a globular structure, and 
to assert the uninterrupted continuity of the component parts of the fibre. They 
proceed to point out a most important distinction “ between the minute structures 
of the muscles of voluntary motion and those of organic life.” The former, they as- 
sert, “ are characterized by innumerable very minute, but clear and fine parallel lines 
or striae, which cross the fibre transversely.” These they conceive to be the distin- 
guishing feature of true muscle. I shall have occasion again to refer to the valuable 
though brief observations of Messrs. Hodgkin and Lister on the subject of the mus- 
cular fibre of organic life. 
Having had the opportunity afforded me, by the kindness of my friend Mr. Henry 
Goadby, of testing the truth of the opinions of these eminent physiologists by the aid 
of his admirable microscope, I beg to lay before the Society the results of some in- 
quiries confirmatory of these opinions, and to add some new facts which I hope may 
be not uninteresting to physiological inquirers. 
The microscope which I have employed is an achromatic instrument, possessing a 
mdcccxxxvii. 3 c 
