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588 MUSCLES.
tained about 7 p. m. NaCl, besides small amounts of Cad2 (0.2 p. m.),
KC1 (0.1 p. m.), and NaHC03 (0.1 p. m.).
The gases of the muscles consist of large quantities of carbon dioxide
besides traces of nitrogen.
In regard to the permeability of the muscles for various bodies there
are the complete investigations of Overton.1
The different sheaths of
the muscles, the sarcolemma and perimysium internum, offer no very
great resistance to the diffusion of the most soluble crystalloid com-
pounds, while the muscle-fibers, on the contrary (exclusive of the sar-
colemma), are almost if not entirely impervious to most inorganic com-
pounds and to many organic compounds. The muscle-fibers themselves
are actually semipermeable structures which are permeable to water
but not to the molecules or ions of sodium chloride and of potassium phos-
phate. The muscle-fibers, as well as the various sheaths, are impermeable
to colloids.
The behavior of the numerous bodies investigated cannot be discussed
in this work. The general rule is as follows: All compounds which,
besides having a marked solubility in water, are readily soluble in ethyl
ether, in the higher alcohols, in olive-oil and in similar organic solvents,
or are not much less soluble in the last-mentioned solvents than in water,
pass through the living muscle-fibers with great ease. The greater the
difference between the solubility of a compound in water and in the other
solvents mentioned, the slower does the passage into the muscle-fibers
take place. The permeability changes essentially on the death of the
muscle.
The living muscle-fibers are readily permeable to oxygen, carbon
dioxide, and ammonia, while the hexoses and disaccharides do not readily
pass into them. It is very remarkable that a great portion of those
compounds which take part in the normal metabolism of plants and
animals belongs to those bodies to which the muscle-fibers (and also other
cells) are entirely or at least nearly impermeable. On the contrary,
derivatives can be prepared from these bodies which pass into the cells
very readily, and Overton finds that it is not impossible that the organ-
ism in part makes use of a similar artifice in order to regulate the concen-
tration of the nutritive bodies within the protoplasm. (See Chapter I.)
Rigor Mortis of the Muscles. If the influence of the circulating
oxygenated blood is removed from the muscles, as after the death of
the animal or by ligature of the aorta or the muscle-arteries (Stenson’s
test), rigor mortis sooner or later takes place. The ordinary rigor
appearing under these circumstances is called the spontaneous or the
1
Pfliiger’s Arch., 92. See also Hober, ibid., 100, and Hamburger, Osmotischer
Druck und Ionenlehre. Bd. 3.
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