A treatise on the blood, inflammation, and gun-shot wounds / by John Hunter ; with notes by James F. Palmer.

  • John Hunter
Date:
1840
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on the blood, inflammation, and gun-shot wounds / by John Hunter ; with notes by James F. Palmer. 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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    elongators, by which they are recovered so as to be enabled to renew their action with effect. The elongators, or powers which enable muscles to recover them- selves, are not always muscular, for when simple elongation is required, it is effected by other means, as elasticity, which is the case in part in the blood-vessels ; and sometimes by motion in matter foreign to the body, yet propelled either by muscles or elasticity, as is also the case in blood-vessels. The elongators may be divided into three kinds, with their compounds. The first kindis muscular, and these may either act immediately, or they may act on some other substance, by which action that sub- stance becomes the immediate cause of the elongation. Those which act immediately, and become elongators to other muscles by their contraction, arein turn elongated by the contraction of these very muscles, to which they served as elongators, the two sets thus becoming reciprocally elongators to each other. This is the case with the greater part of the muscles in the body, and in some mus- cles, as the occipito-frontalis, two different portions are reciprocally elongators; yet these may strictly be considered as two muscles; for although there is no interruption, in the tendon they move the same part in two opposite directions, like distinct antagonist muscles. These reciprocal elongators, by their mutual action on each other, bring out a middle state between the extremes of contraction and elongation, which is the state of ease or tone in both. This appears not to be so much required for the ease of the part moved, as for that of the relaxed muscle,* either extreme of motion leaving the muscle in an uneasy state. We find, therefore, that as soon as any set of muscles cease 1o act, the elongators, which were stretched during their action, are stimulated either by this cessation, or by the uneasy state into which the parts moved have been put, to act in order to bring these parts into a state the furthest removed from the extremes which were uneasy, and by which the stimulus arising from both is equally balanced. This, however, can only happen in such parts of the body as are furnished with muscular elongators; where these are wanting, the muscles of the part having but one office, their state of ease is that of simple relaxation, as they can have no middle state from the action of antagonists ; but such are commonly muscular parts, or so constructed as not to be thrown into an uneasy position by the action of their muscles. I suppose, however, that the elongated state of a muscle is an uneasy state: a muscle, therefore, that is stretched, although in a relaxed state, is uneasy, and will contract a certain length, to what is probably the middle state. Still it is necessary that such parts as are simply muscular, and have no antagonist muscles appropriated immediately for such * [The reading of this passage in all the editions, is for the ease of the re- laxed muscles, as for that the part moved, the reverse of which seems to have been intended by the author.]