Unpublished paper, 'The physical theory of muscular contraction' by Charles Bland Radcliffe

Description

Radcliffe suggests that muscle is prevented from contracting by the several vital and physical agencies which act as stimuli upon muscle: volition, nervous influence, blood, electricity, light and heat. He believes that contraction happens on the cessation of stimulation, by virtue of the operation of that universal principle of attraction which belongs to muscle in common with all matter, and that it is a physical phenomenon of the same nature as that contraction which takes place in a bar of metal on the abstraction of heat.

Annotations in pencil throughout.

Subject: Physiology

Received 18 November 1854. Read 21 December 1854. Communicated by Charles Brooke.

Whilst the Royal Society declined to publish this paper in full, an abstract of the paper was published in volume 7 of the Proceedings of the Royal Society as 'The physical theory of muscular contraction'.

Reference number

AP/37/14

Earliest possible date

1854

Physical description

Ink and graphite pencil on paper

Page extent

53 pages

Format

Manuscript