THE ELECTRIC IMPEDANCE OF SUSPENSIONS OF BIOLOGICAL CELLS

Abstract

The first measurements of the electric resis-tance of living cells were made in the middle of the foregoing century. Such well-known physi-cists as Peltier, Weber, v. Humbolt, and Lenz worked in this field. A large amount of work was don ~ by the noted physiologist du Bois Reymond, who summarized the work done previous to 1850, in his "Untersuchungen fiber tierische Elek-trizit~it." The fundamental fact was brought out, that a living cell becomes polarized when an electric ur-rent passes through it, the resistance of living matter being, in consequence, high when a direct current, or a current of low frequency, is em-ployed, but decreasing when the frequency is in-