In 1906-1907 (Sir) Walter Morley Fletcher and (Sir) Frederick Gowland Hopkins proved at Cambridge that, when muscle contracts under anaerobic conditions, lactic acid accumulates in it and that when oxygen is supplied the lactic acid disappears. Nothing was known of the chemical reactions involved or the way in which they release energy for contraction. No further work was done until Meyerhof entered the field at the end of World War I. But in the physical field A. V. Hill since about 1910 had been investigating the heat produced in muscle on contraction. He showed that the heat was proportional to the work performed; he also demonstrated that about half the heat appeared during the anaerobic contraction phase, while the other half was evolved during the aerobic recovery phase. Hill concluded early in his work that not enough heat was evolved during the recovery period to account for the oxidation of all the lactic acid produced during contraction.
The method for estimating lactic acid in muscle was complex and required about a week to carry out. Using a new rapid method devised by himself, Meyerhof showed in 1920 that, in anaerobic conditions, the lactic acid was derived from glycogen in the muscle and that the amount of lactic acid formed was proportional to the tension produced in the muscle.
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