Comparative electro-physiology : a physico-physiological study / by Jagadis Chunder Bose.

  • Jagadish Chandra Bose
Date:
1907
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Comparative electro-physiology : a physico-physiological study / by Jagadis Chunder Bose. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    52/812 page 4
    Fig. 5. Positive Response of Ag' to Electric Radiation of response does not depend on the electro-positivity or negativity of the substance is seen in the fact that while highly electro positive potassium gives positive response, the equally electro-negative dioxide of lead gives a response of the same sign. Substances like magnesium, aluminium, and iron give negative response. It is found, again, that the same substance, under different molecular conditions, will give responses of opposite signs. For example, a particular molecular variety of silver, Ag', gives positive (fig. 5), whereas ordinary silver gives nega¬ tive response. Again, while Ag' normally gives positive, yet the sign of this response is gradually reversed to nega¬ tive, under the long-continued action of very strong stimulus. By the employment of the same method of resistivity variation, I have been able to obtain excitatory response records from living tissues also. Details of these will be given in a subsequent chapter. The electric response, however, employed to obtain the excitatory reaction of living tissues, depends upon the electro-motive variation of the substance under stimulation. This electric reaction has been regarded as vitalistic in contradistinction to physical. But I have shown that similar responses are given by inorganic substances also. That is to say, the molecular excitability on which the phenomenon of response depends is not distinctive of animal tissues alone, but is common to all matter, both organic and inorganic. If, then, we desire to understand those funda¬ mental reactions which underlie the response of living tissues, it will be well to observe its occurrence in the much simpler case of the inorganic body.1 If we take an inorganic substance, say a piece of metal 1 For a detailed account cf. Bose, Response in the Living and the Non- Living.
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