On the minute structure and movements of voluntary muscle / By William Bowman, Esq., Demonstrator of Anatomy in King's College, London, and Assistant Surgeon to the King's College Hospital.

Sir William Bowman, 1st Baronet

Date:: 1840

Credit: On the minute structure and movements of voluntary muscle / By William Bowman, Esq., Demonstrator of Anatomy in King's College, London, and Assistant Surgeon to the King's College Hospital. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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$XXL On the Minute Structure and Movements of Voluntary Muscle. By William Bowman, Esq. Demonstrator of Anatomy in Kings College, London, and Assistant Surgeon to the King's College Hospital. In a Letter addressed to Robert Bently Todd, M.D. F.R.S., Professor of General Anatomy and Physiology in King's College, London. Communicated hy Professor Todd. Received June 18,—Read June 18, 1840. My dear Dr. Todd, In offering to your notice the following account of some researches into the minute structure and movements of voluntary muscle, which I commenced at your sugges- tion, and in the prosecution of which you have so materially aided me, I am encou- raged to hope that some parts of the inquiry may not be altogether uninteresting to the Royal Society, to which the first discoveries in this important branch of physiology by Robert Hooke and the illustrious Leeuwenhoek were communicated, and which also possesses, in its later Transactions, important papers on the same subject. It has long been known that voluntary muscle is susceptible of subdivision into minute threads, which being almost uniform in size, unbranched, and united by means of vascular and cellular parts into bundles of varying bulk, have generally been re- garded as constituting the essential proximate anatomical element of the organ. All the best observers, since the time of Leeuwenhoek, have recognised the existence of these threads, but their form and composition have been objects of continual dispute, and in the present day wx seem to be as little advanced towards the determination of their real nature as ever. The improvements which have taken place in the con- struction of microscopes, appear indeed to have only afforded grounds for new differ- ences of opinion, as may be seen by the records of the last few years. In 183/ Mr. Skey, after an elaborate investigation, concluded that these threads were tubes containing a soluble gluten, round which were disposed, in longitudinal sets, still finer filaments, which in their turn were held together by circular bands or striae; and since that period. Dr. Mandl, a microscopical observer in Paris, has described and figured them as bundles of fibrils, held together by a spiral coil of filamentous tissue. A more common opinion is, that these threads are bundles of beaded fibrillae, whose beads being placed side by side, cause the appearance of transverse lines, a view which was first entertained by Fontana, though his claims to it have been often overlooked. More lately Dr. Schwann and M. Lauth have advocated the same doctrine, especially the former, who has adduced additional arguments in its support. My design in the present paper \s, first, to vindicate, under certain modifications,$