General Anatomy, Applied to Physiology and Medicine, Vol. 3 (of 3)

by Xavier Bichat

The animal contractility is everywhere the same in the voluntary muscles, because their organization is uniform. All things being equal as to the number and length of the fibres, the phenomena of contraction are exactly the same everywhere; here, on the contrary, the varieties of texture inevitably produce varieties in the vital properties.

Each involuntary muscle is at first especially in relation with the fluid which ordinarily acts as its stimulus. The blood alone can regularly support the motions of the heart. Let this fluid be altered in any manner, the contractions become irregular. All foreign substances forced into the veins produce this phenomenon. The urine, which supports with harmony the motions of the bladder, would disturb those of the heart, if it circulated in its cavities. The blood, more soft in appearance than the urine, can agitate convulsively the bladder, if it happens to be in it. I took care with Desault of a patient affected for a long time with retention of urine, and whom he had cut for a very large stone. After the operation, the urine remained stagnant in the bladder as long as it was alone, but when a little blood entered this organ, it contracted involuntarily and the bloody urine was evacuated. The excrements, which could continue for a long time in the rectum without making it contract, would make the stomach heave in an instant, &c. All these phenomena are to be referred to varieties of sensibility of the mucous membranes, varieties which we shall notice again. They prove evidently that each muscle has a degree of organic contractility which is peculiar to it, and that this or that fluid of the economy can exclusively, in a natural state, put it in exercise in a regular manner.

Foreign fluids exhibit the same result; the emetic which makes the stomach contract, is injected with impunity into the bladder; purgatives do not produce vomiting, &c. This relation of foreign fluids with the sensible organic contractility takes place, whether, as in the preceding case, these fluids are applied to the mucous surfaces corresponding to the muscles, or whether they come to the muscles by the circulation, as the experiments have proved which were made in the last age upon the introduction of medicinal substances into the veins; experiments of which Haller has collected a great number of results. We have seen in these experiments, the circulation present to all the organs sometimes an emetic, and the stomach alone contracts; sometimes a purgative, and the intestines only enter into action, &c. Taken in by cutaneous absorption, medicinal substances occasion the same phenomenon. Applied by friction, purgatives, emetics, &c. do not make all the organic muscles contract, though the circulation presents them to all, but only those with which their sensibility is in relation.

In the various affections of which they are the seat, we see the organic muscles having each a peculiar mode of irritation answer to each stimulus, and remaining deaf, if we may so say, to the voice of the others.

Second Variety. Age.

Age modifies wonderfully the sensible organic contractility. In infancy it is very evident; the muscles answer with extreme ease to the stimuli; the bladder retains the urine with difficulty; children void it in sleep involuntarily; the heart contracts with a rapidity of which the pulse is the measure; all the digestive phenomena are more prompt; hence there is less interval between the returns of hunger. It is a phenomenon analogous to that of the voluntary muscles, in which the rapidity of the motions is found, in the first age, connected with their small degree of force.

After infancy, the susceptibility of the muscles to answer to their stimuli, is constantly diminishing; thus all the great phenomena of organic life are continually becoming slower. The number of pulsations, the duration of digestion, the longer continuance of the urine, &c. are the thermometer of this slowness.

In old age the whole is weakened; the action of the organic muscles gradually diminishes. Those of the bladder and rectum are the most exposed to lose their contractile faculty; hence the retention of urine, which is a frequent companion of old age; hence also the accumulation of fecal matters above the anus, a disease almost as common as the first at this age of life, though it has received less attention from practitioners. Rich people and those accustomed to the luxury of the table are especially subject to it. I have seen much of it, as much even as of retention of urine, in the last year of the practice of Desault. The intestines and the stomach languish more slowly in their functions. It is the heart which resists the most; it is the ultimum moriens, as it has been the first in exercise; the duration of its pulsations measures exactly the duration of organic life.

Third Variety. Temperament.

Temperament modifies in a remarkable manner organic contractility. We know that in some the pulsations are more frequent, the digestive and urinary phenomena more rapid; that in others, every thing is marked by more slowness in organic life; now these varieties have evidently their primitive source in the varieties of the contractility of the heart, the stomach, the intestines, &c. which have under this relation a great influence in the difference of the temperaments. With respect to this there are two essential observations to be made; 1st. The varieties of force of the organic muscles do not always coincide with those of the muscles of animal life. Thus we see an individual with feebly developed exterior forms, with an evident weakness of the muscles of the extremities, whilst the activity of digestion, of the urinary evacuations, &c. announces the greatest energy in the sensible organic contractility. I would remark with regard to this, that the heart is more frequently in relation of force with the external muscles than the stomach, the intestines and the bladder. A full pulse, well developed, is usually found with an athletic constitution; whilst often this constitution is united in the same subject to a feeble gastric system, and especially the force of this gastric system is frequently connected with external weakness. This fact, which the different temperaments demonstrate to us in man, is evident in the series of animals. Those who, like the carnivorous ones, have a very powerful animal muscular system, have the parietes of the gastric cavities like membranes. These parietes are strong in the herbivorous classes; they become very conspicuous in the gallinaceous. In general, mastication over which the animal contractility always presides, is in animals in an inverse ratio of the force of trituration of the stomach, over which the sensible organic contractility presides.