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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    influence. We will now analyze this doctrine and compare it with facts, that its merits, if it have any, may be seen ; re- membering that the only evidence adduced in its favor is the evidence against the doctrine that muscular action is due to nervous influence ; this doctrine being disproved by facts, the doctrine we are now considering has been assumed as the necessary alternative. It rests, therefore, entirely upon this negative evidence. When all these considerations are allowed their due weight, we can scarcely do otherwise than acquiesce fully in the doctrine of Haller. * * * * He regarded every part of the body which is endowed with irritability, as possessing that property in and by itself. To get a clear idea of this doctrine, we must analyze the terms irritability and property, and see what they really mean. It is a fact of observation, that parts of the body, under cer- tain conditions, perform certain actions. The susceptibility of these actions under proper conditions, has received the gen- eral expression, irritability A property, in science, means nothing more nor less than a quality or attribute inseparable from its subject, which cannot be increased or diminished, or in any way changed, without a corresponding change of the subject. Hence, it involves no hypothesis to say, that every part of the body which is endowed with a susceptibility of ac- tion, possesses this as a property in and by itself. This is merely a general expression of the fact. But when irrita- bility is advanced as the reason why a muscle contracts, the spot is at once recognized, where you become weary of think- ing any further. You have arrived at the goal of your phi- losophy. Here is hypothesis, and nothing but hypothesis. The term irritability is sophistically endowed with a trans- ferred meaning from that of susceptibility of action, which in- volves no hypothesis, to that of cause of action, which is all hypothesis. Now, Dr. Carpenter uses the terms irritability, contractility, motility, &c, in this sophistical, transferred sense, and it is to this I object. I expect to show that the cause of muscular action is not a property which the muscles possess in and by themselves. By the term cause is not meant the ultimate cause, nor the yet final cause, with which