Physiologic properties of muscle The specific and most specialized physiologic property of muscle is contractility. Like other forms of living protoplasm, muscle possesses other physiologic properties, namely, irritability, conductivity, and metabolism. Although during the period of development muscle cells have the power to divide and thus reproduce themselves, this property is lost in adult tissue. Repair of ruptured muscle fibers is accomplished by a formation of scar tissue (connective tissue). By irritability is meant that property by which a tissue is capable of responding, with its particular type of response, to adequate stimuli. Outside of the body, many forms of artificial stimuli may be employed to stimulate muscle, namely, electrical, mechanical, chemical, and others, but in the intact body the normal stimulus is from its motor nerve,--the efferent nerve impulse. In skeletal muscle, the excitation wave is normally conducted throughout the extent of a single fiber only, but not from fiber to fiber. This is not the case, however, in heart and smooth muscle where there is branching of the fibers or some other form of continuity. In these, the wave of excitation may spread without opposition from fiber to fiber. All living protoplasm, muscle not excepted, carries on its own metabolic processes, that is, from the nutritive supplies brought to it by the blood it is able to build up its own tissues, throw off its own wastes, respire, and produce energy. When a muscle responds, with the development of tension, upon the application of either an artificial or its normal stimulus, certain rather definite and specific changes occur within it, namely, mechanical change, chemical change, the production of heat, production of electricity, and production of sound.		Home Classes of levers Varieties of muscle Smooth muscle The blood supply to muscles The neurone Cardiac muscle On the nomenclature of skeletal muscles The nerve supply to muscles Structure of a skeletal muscle Central nervous system The reflex arc and reflex action Physiologic properties of muscle Mechanical Changes The effects of temperature on muscular contraction Muscle glycogen, its source and fate The reaction of muscles Oxygen consumption of muscle Determination of the oxygen consumption of muscle The viscosity factor in muscle and muscle efficiency Significance of the recovery heat Production of Electricity