principles of the organism, reduced to a lower degree of complexity.
Destruction of Reserve-stuff.—But now the disagreement begins. What are these decomposed, destroyed principles? Do they belong to the cellular reserve-stuff or to the living matter properly so called? There is no doubt that most of them belong to the reserve-stuff. For example, this is especially true of glycogen, which is consumed in muscular contraction just as coal is consumed in the furnace of the locomotive; and glycogen is a reserve-stuff of muscle. These reserve-stuffs destroyed in the functional activity can be built up again only during repose.
But it is not yet certain whether the living matter itself, the active protoplasm, the muscular protoplasm, takes part in this destruction, whether it provides it with elements. Experiments have proved contradictory. Experimenters have isolated the nitrogenous wastes (urea) after muscular labour, and they have compared them with the wastes of the period of repose. These nitrogenous wastes bear witness to the destruction of albuminoid substances, and the latter are the constituent principles of living matter. If—under conditions of sufficient alimentation—the muscular functional activity involves more nitrogenous waste, i.e., a greater destruction of albuminoids, it might be supposed that the living material properly so called has been used up and destroyed for its own purposes. (And here again there might be a reserve-stuff of albuminoids, distinct from the living protoplasm itself, and more or less incorporated with it.)
But experiment so far has not given decisive results. The latest experimental researches, such as those of
