Abstract
Summary
The results of electric stimulations of an isolated smooth muscle before and after the successive applications of a choline ester, atropine and epinephrine, seem to lend support to the theory that these drugs and the electric current, in ordinary strengths, act solely on receptive sulbtances for the neural hormones. These findings are in harmony with the chemical theory of nerve transmission, and, taken with the findings of others, suggest that each axone in the body acts by liberating at its endings a specific substance that catalyzes a specific receptive sthtance in the effector or other nerve cell with which they lie in contact, into fractions, one of which directly stimulates or inhibits the effector mechanism, or, in the nerve cell, the impulse mechanism. The experiments of Lánczos 2 suggest calcium ions as one of these fractions, those of Brown and Feldberg 2 suggest potassium ions as another.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.