FROM THE LIQUIDATION OF INOGEN TO THE FIRST BALANCING OF THE THERMOCHEMICAL BOOKS

In 1898 Fletcher, coming with an open mind to a subject in danger of being stifled with theorisation, published his first paper on survival respiration of excised muscle. This work may be regarded as the real beginning of quantitative muscle biochemistry. The new, rapid and comparatively micromethod of carbon dioxide estimation that he used made it possible to study the gas evolution over far shorter periods than formerly, and so to avoid the complications of putrefactive changes.

Fletcher first observed the behaviour of frog muscle kept in air or nitrogen. There was an initial fall in carbon dioxide output, followed by a small steady evolution during some hours; then an important acceleration accompanied by shortening – the onset of rigor. From the shape of the time curve, Fletcher explained the early fall as due to outward diffusion of carbon dioxide already present in the muscle; the plateau as due to evolution of the gas displaced from carbonates by slow production of acid. The survival carbon dioxide production of resting muscle in oxygen was some four times that in nitrogen. Stimulation to contraction in nitrogen had little effect unless the muscle was pushed to fatigue; but in oxygen there was always increased output roughly proportional to the number and degree of contractions.