Electric Impedance of Nerve and Muscle

The history of the developments in the measurement and the interpretation of the electrical conductivity of living cells and cell aggregates is largely a story of attempted application of newly discovered physical laws, concepts, and methods of measurement to biological materials. Almost without exception it has been found that the complexity of the living systems has been far greater than that for which the simple physical ideas were adequate, and ever since the discovery of Ohm's law in 1827, the anamolies of the biological measurements have had to wait on the physical sciences for their interpretations. This chapter in the history of science may be found in many places, including Gildermeister (1928), Fricke (1933), Cole (1933), and von Muralt (1935), so we shall attempt to present the subject in terms of contemporary measurements and their interpretations rather than from the historical viewpoint.