WHAT THE HEART CAN STAND

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 2185, 5 October 1920, Page 4

WHAT THE HEART CAN STAND

(By a Professor of Medicine.)

While Sir Janies "Mackenzie, the dstinguished heart specialist, says that he has never, yet seen any hoy suffer ham from athletic exercises —the athletic heart is a figment for imagination—he agrees that he considers it very unwise to allow boys to pursue effort beyond a certain stage of exhaustion.

It is not the heart that.is in danger, hut the immimily of- the body

to infection, and in particular, to tuberculosis, which results from over-fatigue and exhaustion. We know that practically every city hoy is infected with the tubercle bacilli by the age of .fifteen, and that the infection in chldhood is in almost all cases a mild one, which under ordinary healthy conditions of life, enhances the resistance of the body to the further.invasion oil the tubercle bacillus just as vaccination protects against small-pox, or an attack of measles protects against any other attack. The tubercle bacilli remain alive in the infected lymphatic gland, or other tissue, surrounded, so to speak, by a wire entanglement of connective tissue, there imprisoned and kept in control. But excessive fatigue and exhaustion may exhaust the gaolers—(the warrior white corpuscles of the blood, or those immunising substances in the blood which the tissues of the body produce. Then the tubercle bacilli may break out of prison :\nd produce consumption, or the body may fall a victime to.a new infection received by the inhalation of the saliva spray coughed out by some consumptive, many of whom are walking about carrying infection and not knowing that they have the disease.

The medical examination of recruits during the war showed how many milk vendors, barbers, and school teachers were consumptive unknown to themselves.

Athletes have particularly to avoid —not heart strain, but consumption.

They should lake a lesson from the racing stables. There the loose Is brought into perfection ot good training by good feed, carefully measured iu quantity, by cool, fresh aiF in the stable, and by wisely regulated exercise. Its training is sneli that you can scarcely pick up its skin between linger and thumb. At the end of an eight furlong race a patch of foamy sweat may be as large as a saucer, but not as big as a dinner plate. One secs the extraordinarily careful discipline that livings lojierfection the racehorse compared with the haphazard methods of life man follows in regard lo his children and himself.

A horse is allywed to do an eight furlong race in (he day. but not two such races. On the other hand we see growing hoys exhausting themselves by running too many or 100 long races. Athletics should he carried to the extent of wholesome fafigue, which promotes strength and health —never lo exhaustion.