Abstract
It is an old observation1,2 that intact muscle subjected to a hydrostatic pressure of a few thousand pounds per square inch goes into contracture. Further, it was shown by Brown3 that in the range where contracture is still small, pressure greatly increases the tension of an electrically stimulated twitch, and that this effect occurs if the pressure is maintained only up to the end of the latent period. Thus pressure is promoting a precursor reaction which has been loosely called activation.
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References
Ebbecke, U., Pflüg. Arch., 157, 79 (1914).
Brown, D. E. S., and Edwards, D. J., Amer. J. Physiol., 101, 15 (1932).
Brown, D. E. S., Biol. Symp., 3, 161 (1941).
Goodall, M. C., and Szent Györgyi, A. G., Nature, 172, 84 (1953).
Johnson, F. H., Eyring, H., and Polissar, M., “Kinetic Basis of Molecular Biology” (Chapman and Hall, London, 1954).
Szent Györgyi, A., “Chemistry of Muscular Contraction” (2nd edit., Academic Press, New York, 1951).
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BROWN, D., GOODALL, M. Reversal of Relaxing Mechanism in Muscle Fibre Systems by Hydrostatic Pressure. Nature 178, 1470–1471 (1956). https://doi.org/10.1038/1781470a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/1781470a0
