Chemical Basis of Muscle Contraction

Abstract

This book is largely a summary of the work of the Szeged school carried out just before or during the war years, and is not designed for the consideration of past or contemporary studies on muscle and muscle proteins. It is, indeed, an intensely individual book, representing a rather novel and daring approach to the problem of physiological contraction. This, no doubt, explains the widespread interest which Prof. Szent-Györgyi has aroused, and among the background of polemical discussion which such interest has invoked, the reviewer must attempt an impartial judgment which is not shocked into scientific conservatism by novelty, but is based solely upon objective consideration of experimental data. Unfortunately, a critique along these lines is not wholly possible: some results are personally communicated; others are derived from data not yet accessible; others, still, do not conform with more recent experiments as described in a ‘stop-press’ section (Part IV). In these circumstances, it seems most profitable to discuss only the more important features which are especially relevant to the problem of muscle biochemistry, leaving the interpolated section on “The Continuum Theory” (Part III) for other comment.

Chemistry of Muscular Contraction.

By A. Szent-Györgyi. Pp. vi + 150. (New York: Academic Press, Inc.; London: H. K. Lewis and Co., Ltd., 1947.) 4.50 dollars.