Natural History of the Nerve Impulse

Abstract

The author takes as major theses the following first, that all-or-none response is a special case of the general property of excitability; second, that it was developed chiefly under the necessity of action over distances in organisms whose parts became separated by reason of size and complexity and where graded response and consequent decremental conduction would be inadequate for central nervous system control of peripheral organs-, third, that the chief and most characteristic functions of nervous and other excitable tissues are performed by means of graded responses. Such instances in the literature as may support such a viewpoint, even circumstantially, are cited, without, however, attempting a comprehensive review of the literature on excitability.