Explore how muscle cells work, from the chemistry inside fibers to the movement they drive.
This edition focuses on the muscle tissue itself, describing what makes muscle cells tick.
The book presents a clear look at muscle as a tissue, studying the smallest functional units—fibers—and how they come together to form muscles. It emphasizes what can be learned from isolated muscles and how those findings relate to muscle activity in the whole organism. The aim is to describe the characters and functions of muscle cells, while noting the limitations of studying parts in isolation.
What you’ll experience:
- Foundational ideas about the structure and function of muscle fibers
- Discussion of how muscles generate heat, tension, and work
- Overview of factors like ions, energy sources, and oxidative processes
- Connections between cellular activity and whole-muscle behavior across vertebrate and invertebrate groups
Ideal for readers who want a focused, cell-level view of muscular physiology and how this relates to muscle performance in living organisms.
Originally published in 1928, this book examines whether all muscular contractions use essentially the same processes regardless of the type of muscle in question. Ritchie uses an isolated muscle from a frog to investigate whether the chemical and physical causes of a simple muscle twitch can be responsible for the movements of all muscles.