On Signor Carlo Matteucciʼs letter to H. Bence Jones : editor of an abstract of Dr. Bois-Reymondʼs Researches in animal electricity / by Emil Du Bois-Reymond.

  • Du Bois-Reymond, Emil, 1818-1896.
Date:
1853
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On Signor Carlo Matteucciʼs letter to H. Bence Jones : editor of an abstract of Dr. Bois-Reymondʼs Researches in animal electricity / by Emil Du Bois-Reymond. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

    39/44 (page 39)
    contraction, which he discovered, but did not succeed in tracing to its true origin. Now a mere inspection of the table of con- tents of the Abstract, or of the short conclusions enumei-ated in its last chapter, will suffice to show that I have enlarged our knowledge of this class of phenomena, far beyond the point at which Signor Matteucci arrived. From the preceding pages it might appear, indeed, as if I had only worked at the same subjects as Signor Matteucci. But this is only because in his pamphlet he confined himself to an exami- nation of those passages of the Abstract in which his name happened to occur (pp. 3,14). Thus, of course, all those parts of that book escaped his censure, and consequently were passed over in silence, in which subjects utterly unknown to him are treated of, as in such parts there was no occasion to mention him. These parts, however, form rather the greater part of the Abstract. The statements thus far adducedin the present reply were mostly taken from my paper of January, 1843. Since that time, up to the present, I have incessantly and exclusively been employed in prosecuting these researches. Of the results which I have obtained I will only mention the following here. To the law of the muscular current, as it was stated by me in my first paper, I soon added the law according to which different points also of the longitudinal or transverse section alone pro- duce currents on being connected by the galvanometer wire (Abstract, p. 92) ; then the law, according to which the intensity of the muscular current varies with the position of the muscle on the ends of the galvanometer circuit, whether the distance of these ends remain unchanged or be allowed to vary also ; again, the law according to which that intensity varies wdth the length and thickness of muscles (p. 115). The same laws I proved to apply to the nerves (pp. 164, 172). I examined more closely into the electric action of the natural transverse section of muscles, and succeeded in ex- plaining all its apparent anomalies by pointing out what 1 have called the parelectronomic layer of the muscle, that is, a layer of muscular substance situated beneath the expan- sion of the tendon, the electromotive power of which more or less counteracts that of the rest of the muscle (p 116) I showed that the electromotive power of contractile tissues