Epilepsy and other affections of the nervous system which are marked by tremor, convulsion, or spasm : their pathology and treatment / by Charles Bland Radcliffe.

  • Radcliffe, Charles Bland, 1822-1889
Date:
1854
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Epilepsy and other affections of the nervous system which are marked by tremor, convulsion, or spasm : their pathology and treatment / by Charles Bland Radcliffe. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    cause decided relaxation in tlie muscular system vvlien they are introduced into the circulation. — It appears, therefore, that physical and vital agents exert a similar kind of action upon ordinary muscle, and that they stimulate the reverse of contraction if they stimulate anything. It appears, indeed, as if this action antagonised the ordinary molecular attraction of the muscle so long as it lasted, and that contraction took place by means of the molecular attraction when the action ceased;—and that it does so may be argued from the character of the motion. It is supposed that this motion is diflPerent from that whicli would result from molecular attraction, and an experiment by M. Schwann is cited in support of this opinion. That physiologist argues that if muscular con¬ traction were due to ordinary molecular attraction it would become greater and greater as the molecules approximated; and because he found, on measuring the force of contraction in the muscles of a frog’s leg at different degrees of contraction, that the force decreased as the muscle contracted, he concluded that the force concerned could not be that of molecular attraction. But he curiously overlooks a very obvious element in the calculation, and forgets to estimate the effects of resist¬ ance in counteracting the attraction of the molecules. He reasons as if the muscle and the apparatus em¬ ployed to test the contraction did not exist; and doing this his whole experiment falls to the ground, except it be retained to show tlie very opposite of that for which it was intended—namely, that the pure law of