The influence of muscular and mental work on metabolism and the efficiency of the human body as a machine / By Francis G. Benedict ... and Thorne M. Carpenter.

  • Francis Gano Benedict
Date:
1909
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The influence of muscular and mental work on metabolism and the efficiency of the human body as a machine / By Francis G. Benedict ... and Thorne M. Carpenter. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

    13/110 (page 9)
    INFLUENCE OF MUSCULAR AND MENTAL WORK ON METABOLISM AND EFFICIENCY OF THE BODY AS A MACHINE, MUSCULAR WORK AND BODY EFFICIENCY. INTRODUCTION. The marked and immediate influence of muscular exertion on the transformations of matter and energy in the body has long served as a subject for experimentation. The earliest experimenters were enabled to make observations on the influence of severe muscular exercise on the body functions from simple observations on the ap- pearance of fatigue, sensible perspiration, rapid respiration and pulse rate, and loss in weight. Such superficial observations were soon supplemented by others more or less accurate regarding the amount of work that the body could do. The attempts to measure this amount of work have been numerous, and have resulted in the devel- opment of several sorts of apparatus for this purpose. The simplest (and perhaps the earliest) device for measuring work w as t hat of lifting a weight a given number of times. From the well- known relations of work to the weight times the height to which it is lifted, it was possible to compute in foot-pounds the amount of work performed by a man. The treadwheel, which is described by Ilirna and Chauveau,6 is a device based upon the same physical principle as Lifting a weight. The subject lifts his own body through varying heights, depending upon the length of time during which he walks on the treadwheel or treadmill. The introduction of the ergograph, which has been elaborated by Mosso,0 enabled studies of particular groups of small muscles to be made with great accuracy. Theergostal, which has been introduced in recent years, particularly by dohann- Bond and Xunix,' permits the bringing into play of the powerful muscles of the arm and back. Thermodynamique et I'Etude du Travail chez lea &trea vivants. Pane, L887 bCompI Rend. Acad. Sci. [Paris], L29(1899), p. 249. cArch. ttal. Biol., L3i L890), p. \s.\. *8kand. Arch. Physiol., II (1901), p. 273. 'An!,. I'll ip.,p. 39.