The purpose of Part I is to introduce the anatomy and physiology of excitable tissues and the mechanism of bioelectric phenomena.

Chapter 2 begins on a cellular level, with a discussion of the anatomy and physiology of nerve and muscle cells. A discussion of cellular electrophysiology on a qualitative basis follows in this chapter and then on a quantitative basis in Chapter 3. This chapter explores the bioelectric behavior of the cell membrane under the firing threshold, and Chapter 4 the activation mechanism. Biomagnetic phenomena are not yet discussed in Part I.

Next the anatomy and physiology of excitable tissues at the organ level is briefly reviewed first in Chapter 5 on neural tissue and then in Chapter 6 on cardiac tissue. Our purpose is to introduce the necessary vocabulary and to provide an overview of the source of bioelectric phenomena.