Note 51 — Chapter VIII · DIFFERENTIATIONS AMONG THE INNER TISSUES OF ANIMALS.

In recent years (since 1890) Prof. Wilhelm Roux, in essays on functional adaptation, has set forth some views akin to the foregoing in respect to the general belief they imply, though differing in respect of the physiological processes he indicates. The following relevant passage has been translated for me from an article of his in the Real-Encyclopädie der gesammten Heilkunde:—“A more complete theory of functional adaptation by the author is founded on the assumption that the ‘functional’ stimulus, or ‘the act of exercising the function’ (in muscles and glands), and especially, in the case of bones, the concussion and tension caused by stress and strain, exert a ‘trophic’ stimulus on the cells, in consequence of which, and along with an increased absorption of nutriment, they grow and eventually increase (or the osteoblasts at the point of greater stimulus form more bone); while, conversely, with continued inactivity, by absence of these stimuli the nourishment of the cell declines so that the waste is insufficiently replaced (or otherwise that the bone-substance gradually loses its power of resistance to the osteoblasts formed as a result of inactivity”).