An essay on muscular action and its conditions : the ninth of a series of articles published in the Saint Louis medical journal on "life" / by J.H. Watters.

  • Watters, J. H. (John H.)
Date:
[1857]
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An essay on muscular action and its conditions : the ninth of a series of articles published in the Saint Louis medical journal on "life" / by J.H. Watters. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    sion calls for it? I only propose answering this question in a general manner, as our knowledge at present of the ner- vous system will not justify anything more. As I am now considering the phenomena of muscular action in reference to the views advocated in the previous articles, the explanations here offered will be appreciated more according to the stand- point from which they are viewed, than to the direct argu- ments by which they are attempted to be sustained. If from the stand-point which you occupy, you see nothing absurd in all the explanations where the object is to be accounted for the excitement or stimulwion of the muscular irritability, the explanations here attempted, where the object is rather to ac- count for the regulation of chemical change in the muscle, will have but little force. As soon as the phenomena of electricity began to receive at- tention, the identity of nervous influence and electricity began to be believed. I will pass over all those relations and corresponding phenomena upon which this belief was founded, as they can be read elsewhere. Neither will I refer here to those experiments which seemed to confirm, but only to those which have been thought sufficient to disprove this identity. In the consideration of these, T hope to present clearly what I consider the respective relations of the muscular and ner- vous systems to muscular action. All phenomena are seen according to the relation of ideas which pre-occupy the mind. Let it be remembered here, that all the observations and experiments bearing upon the sub- ject now under consideration, have been made upon the pre- conceived notion, that when muscular action follows an act of volition, some influence is sent from the nervous centres to the muscle. As in the early history of Astronomy, many valuable observations were made with the pre-conceived no- tion that the earth was fixed, and that the apparent motions of the heavenly bodies were real; so, many valuable facts have been gathered in regard to the function of the nervous system with this pre-conceived notion of the transmission of an agency or influence from the nervous centres. It is hard, and indeed impossible, suddenly to change the relation of our ideas; and hence, every conception which requires to