Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- List of abbreviations
- 1 Bringing muscles into focus; the first two millennia
- 2 Muscle metabolism after the Chemical Revolution; lactic acid takes the stage
- 3 The relationship between mechanical events, heat production and metabolism; studies between 1840 and 1930
- 4 The influence of brewing science on the study of muscle glycolysis; adenylic acid and the ammonia controversy
- 5 The discovery of phosphagen and adenosinetriphosphate; contraction without lactic acid
- 6 Adenosinetriphosphate as fuel and as phosphate-carrier
- 7 Early studies of muscle structure and theories of contraction, 1870–1939
- 8 Interaction of actomyosin and ATP
- 9 Some theories of contraction mechanism, 1939 to 1956
- 10 On myosin, actin and tropomyosin
- 11 The sliding mechanism
- 12 How does the sliding mechanism work?
- 13 Excitation, excitation-contraction coupling and relaxation
- 14 Happenings in intact muscle: the challenge of adenosinetriphosphate breakdown
- 15 Rigor and the chemical changes responsible for its onset
- 16 Respiration
- 17 Oxidative phosphorylation
- 18 The regulation of carbohydrate metabolism for energy supply to the muscle machine
- 19 A comparative study of the striated muscle of vertebrates
- 20 Enzymic and other effects of denervation, cross-innervation and repeated stimulation
- 21 Some aspects of muscle disease
- 22 Contraction in muscles of invertebrates
- 23 Vertebrate smooth muscle
- 24 Energy provision and contractile proteins in non-muscular functions
- The perspective surveyed
- References
- Author index
- Subject index
2 - Muscle metabolism after the Chemical Revolution; lactic acid takes the stage
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 August 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- List of abbreviations
- 1 Bringing muscles into focus; the first two millennia
- 2 Muscle metabolism after the Chemical Revolution; lactic acid takes the stage
- 3 The relationship between mechanical events, heat production and metabolism; studies between 1840 and 1930
- 4 The influence of brewing science on the study of muscle glycolysis; adenylic acid and the ammonia controversy
- 5 The discovery of phosphagen and adenosinetriphosphate; contraction without lactic acid
- 6 Adenosinetriphosphate as fuel and as phosphate-carrier
- 7 Early studies of muscle structure and theories of contraction, 1870–1939
- 8 Interaction of actomyosin and ATP
- 9 Some theories of contraction mechanism, 1939 to 1956
- 10 On myosin, actin and tropomyosin
- 11 The sliding mechanism
- 12 How does the sliding mechanism work?
- 13 Excitation, excitation-contraction coupling and relaxation
- 14 Happenings in intact muscle: the challenge of adenosinetriphosphate breakdown
- 15 Rigor and the chemical changes responsible for its onset
- 16 Respiration
- 17 Oxidative phosphorylation
- 18 The regulation of carbohydrate metabolism for energy supply to the muscle machine
- 19 A comparative study of the striated muscle of vertebrates
- 20 Enzymic and other effects of denervation, cross-innervation and repeated stimulation
- 21 Some aspects of muscle disease
- 22 Contraction in muscles of invertebrates
- 23 Vertebrate smooth muscle
- 24 Energy provision and contractile proteins in non-muscular functions
- The perspective surveyed
- References
- Author index
- Subject index
Summary
The greater part of the eighteenth century brought no fundamental contributions to the elucidation of contractility in living organisms. A deeper understanding of the chemistry of inorganic and organic matter was really pre-requisite for this, and great strides now began to be made in these directions.
THE CHEMICAL BACKGROUND
The quantitative study of gases (which had begun with Robert Boyle in 1660) was continued vigorously during this next century, and interpreted in terms of the phlogiston theory of Stahl, enunciated in 1697. This theory explained combustion as due to the presence in combustible material of a principle of inflammability (sometimes credited with negative weight) termed phlogiston; material supporting combustion did so in virtue of its power to absorb phlogiston, and this principle was lost during combustion. The work of Black on fixed air (carbon dioxide) in 1755; of Cavendish between 1766 and 1784 on fixed air, inflammable air (hydrogen) phlogisticated air (nitrogen) and dephlogisticated air (oxygen); and of Priestley on dephlogisticated air may be specially mentioned. In 1774 Priestley prepared purified dephlogisticated air (to which Lavoisier a little later gave the name oxygen) by heating red oxide of mercury; he showed that this gas was better than common air for supporting combustion and life.
Lavoisier had also intensively studied calcination, and had shown that in this process tin for example gained in weight, while the air in which it was contained lost equally in weight and also diminished in volume.
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- Chapter
- Information
- Machina CarnisThe Biochemistry of Muscular Contraction in its Historical Development, pp. 27 - 42Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1971