Mammalian Slow and Fast Skeletal Muscle

Abstract

In gladly accepting the opportunity to contribute to Professor John Eccles’ presentation volume it is appropriate that I should write on the subject to which he introduced me, mammalian skeletal muscle. Although many would not primarily couple the name of Eccles with investigations in the field of muscle physiology his contributions to this field have extended over many years, passing from his early work in collaboration with Sybil Cooper on the true form of the isometric responses of mammalian muscle (Cooper and Eccles 1930), through his wartime observations on muscle atrophies arising from disuse and tenotomy (Eccles 1944) to the most recent work in which I had the priviledge of joining him, concerning the influence of motor innervation on the speed of a muscle’s contractile response (Buller, Eccles and Eccles 1960). All of these observations were undertaken using mammalian muscle, and have been concerned more with the principles of organisation and functioning of muscles as they exist in the intact organism than with the biophysical questions of contractile mechanisms. To this end Eccles in his experiments has insisted upon keeping the muscles as near to “normality” as possible by maintaining an adequate circulation, a physiological temperature and generally using stimulation via the motor nerves. Such experimental conditions contrast sharply with those used by such eminent muscle physiologists as Professor A. V. Hill and his school.