NOTES AND ABSTRACTS IN CHEMISTRY AND PHARMPCY. 
293 
utilize it; that they have uot more generally co-operated with the Pharmaceu¬ 
tical Society is owing to the circumstance that the plant is not suited to the soil, 
and therefore requires an immense deal of nursing in order to make it grow; 
and I believe a large portion of those who are connected with it are so more 
from policy than sympathy. Under this view, I should not be surprised at a 
considerable secession when it be seen that no further parliamentary interference 
need be feared or expected. 
Yours very respectfully, 
A CouNTRA^ Chemist. 
[Note .—The list of a day’s business forwarded includes a large number of 
articles, mostly in one and two pennyworths, amounting in all to £2. 125 .] 
NOTES AND AESTEACTS IN CHEMISTEY AND PHAEMACY. 
The Source of Muscular Power. 
Some very important researches upon this subject have been recently pub¬ 
lished by Drs. Pick and Wislicenus, Professors at the University of Zurich, 
and also by Dr. Erankland in this country. An account of these experiments 
was given in a lecture delivered at the Eoyal Institution by the latter che¬ 
mist during last session. 
It is probable that these investigations will very materially affect the pre¬ 
sent condition of physiological science, tending, as they do, to entirely change 
the ideas hitherto entertained respecting the relation of food to the require¬ 
ments of the animal body. 
Twenty years ago, physiologists would have attributed the source of mus¬ 
cular power to something peculiar, developed by living animals, and termed 
vital force. The progress of scientific discovery, however, rapidly dissipated 
the very crude notions which then existed regarding this mysterious agency. 
We now know than an animal, however high its organization may be, can no 
more generate an amount of force capable of moving a grain of sand than a 
stone can fall upwards, or a locomotive drive a train wiEiout fuel. All that 
such an animal can do is to liberate that store of force, or potential energy., 
which is locked up in its food. It is the chemical change which food suffers 
in the body of an animal that liberates the previously pent-up forces of that 
food, which now make their appearance in the form of actual energy ,—as 
heat and mechanical motion. From food, and food alone, comes the matter 
of which the animal body is built up ; and from food alone come all the dif¬ 
ferent kinds of physical,/orce which an animal is capable of manifesting. 
The two chief forms of force thus manifested are heat and muscular motion, 
or mechanical work. These have been almost universally traced to two dis¬ 
tinct sources,—the heat to the oxidation of iliefood, and the mechanical work 
to the oxidation of the muscles. This doctrine, first promulgated by Liebig, 
has been within late years adopted by most physiologists, and has been 
taught in all text-books treating of the subject. The proximate constituents 
of food have been frequently divided into two groups—the carbonaceous or 
non-nitrogenous, such as fat, starch, sugar, and the nitrogenous, such as 
fibrin, albumen, and casein,—the former class being regarded as comprising 
simple heat givers, that is to say, substances that furnish material for oxidation 
in the process of respiration, and thus maintain the temperature of the body; 
the nitrogenous constituents being the flesh-formers, or substances build¬ 
ing up the muscles of the body, through which motive force is exerted.^ The 
exercise of a muscle being accompanied by a proportionate destruction or 
oxidation of its tissue, it follows that the plastic or flesh-forming constituents 
