contractability

(It is interesting to note, however, that muscular fibre detached from the living organism and mechanically stretched and relaxed shows after a period the same decrease in contractability under stimulation.)

Modern Religious Cults and Movements Gaius Glenn Atkins 1912

Bouchut has remarked in the eruptions of scarlatina a curious phenomenon, which serves to distinguish this eruption from that of measles, erythema, erysipelas &c., a phenomenon essentially vital, and which is connected with the excessive contractability of the capillaries.

Advice to a Mother on the Management of Her Children Pye Henry Chavasse 1844

(This estimate would equal in an adult man an amount equal to the absolute alcohol in two or three ounces of whisky or brandy.) "These investigations of Professor Martin, being directly corroborated by those of Drs. Ringer and Sainsbury, complete the series of demonstrations needed to show the actual effects of alcohol on the cardiac, as well as on the vasomotor, and also on the direct contractability of the muscular structure, when supplied with blood containing all gradations in the relative proportion of alcohol, leaving no longer any basis for the idea, popular both in and out of the profession, that alcohol in any of its forms is capable of increasing, even temporarily the force or efficiency of the heart's action."

Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why What Medical Writers Say Martha Meir Allen 1890

"Sensibility and contractability are the fundamental qualities of living matter and of the life of our tissues.

The Evolution of Modern Medicine A Series of Lectures Delivered at Yale University on the Silliman Foundation in April, 1913 William Osler 1884