Epileptic and other convulsive affections of the nervous system, their pathology and treatment.

  • Radcliffe, Charles Bland, 1822-1889.
Date:
1861
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Epileptic and other convulsive affections of the nervous system, their pathology and treatment. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by UCL Library Services. The original may be consulted at UCL (University College London)

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    rallel to the changes in muscle—changes of which the parallelism does not fail in that point which is so charac- teristic of muscle, namely, the suddenness with which the contracted and elongated states may alternate the one upon the other, for in the first experiment the bar is seen and heard and felt to jump suddenly from the elongated to the contracted state, aud from the contracted back again to the elongated state, as the magnetism is withdrawn or communicated. 4. It is impossible to dogmatize upon the mode in which the will acts in voluntary muscular contraction; but this, at any rate, is plain, that there is nothing in the case to render it necessary to suppose that the will is, so to speak, infused into the contracting muscle, and that this most vital of all vital energies acts as a stimulus to a vital property of contractility inherent in muscle. This much is also plain—that there is nothing in the case to render it impossible that the will may act by bringing about a change in the nerve-current of the musculo-motor nerves, that this change may involve the development of induced currents in the muscles, and that these currents may be the agents through which the will works in pro- ducing voluntary muscular contraction. And certainly there is nothing in this view which in any sense com- promises the dignity of the will as a vital power. — And if aU this be so—if these facts, which at first seemed to presentdifficulties,maybe explained in this manner—what is the conclusion of the whole matter ? Is it not that which was hinted at as probable at the commencement of the present chapter ? Is it not this—that elongation, rather than con- traction, is the chief peculiarity of muscle ? Is it not this— that there is a state of polarity in incitable muscle during relaxation which produces relaxation, and that contraction is nothing more than the necessary result of the muscle