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SECONDLY,

OF

INDIRECT STIMULI.

.ECT. XXXVII.

LAW III.

A DEFECTIVE STIMULATION OF ANY ORGAN AC

CUMULATES IRRITABILITY IN THE MOVING

FIBRES.

THE blood veffels, the absorbents, the stomach, and intestines (which might, without much impropriety, be called HOLLOW MUSCLES), are in conftant action from the fimuli appropriated to them. The LOCOMOTIVE MUSCLES, when not acted upon by the nervous electricity* darted into them by the will, are nevertheless in conftant action, as is feen in the tremor of old men, in the palfy of the head, and from the contraction of an

* The celerity of ele&ricity keeps pace with the celerity of volition, and therefore seems peculiarly adapted to explain the phænomena of the nervous fyftem. When Louis the XVth, from a motive of curiofity, commanded a battalion of 2000 men to stand hand in hand, to receive the electric circuit through their bodies, the latt man felt the shock at the fame inftant with the first. So in the act of volition, the moment the mind wills the hand to be moved, it is moved; but without our being confcious of the manner how ; because it was not neceffary we should know it was done by the mind directing the nervous electricity into the moving fibres of the part.

Sect. XII.

VOL. III.

Vide Part I.

tagonist

tagonist muscles, when those which counterpoise them are cut through, or lose their action (called by HALLER their vis insita), from a paralytic affection. Vide note*, Vol. I. page 128.

The IRRITABLE FIBRE therefore, from the moment of its existence to that of its diffolution, being constantly furrounded by principles which act upon it, and ftimulate it, and upon which it re-acts, it follows, that during the period of its existence, the IRRITABLE FIBRE is in continual action; that its existence consists in action, and that it is not in a paffive ftate, as fome authors have afferted.

The continued actions going on in organized animated beings expend the IRRITABLE PRINCIPLE in the fibre, whether THAT be,

ift, OXYGEN derived from the blood;

2d. ELECTRICITY; or fome as yet

3d. UNPERCEIVED POWER in the fibre.

PROP.

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