Physiology of bodily exercise / by Fernand Lagrange.

  • Lagrange, Fernand, 1846-1909.
Date:
1893
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Physiology of bodily exercise / by Fernand Lagrange. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

    266/428 (page 240)
    At this moment we observe in both men an extreme degree of breathlessness. A wrestler who is beaten has respiratory disturbances as intense as those of a runner who stops for want of breath. Wrestling is not merely an assault of brute force ; it has its feints, attacks and tricks. But the characteristic of this exercise is the necessity of throwing into the movements of attack and defence a man's whole strength, so that, even for the cleverest wrestlers, this exercise always demands a great expenditure of force, and is the most brutal of all bodily exercises. It is the exercise in which the quantity of muscle is the essential element of success. It is thus the one which has most tendency to develop muscle and to increase the weight of the body, for every exercise tends to give to the body the conformation which makes this the fitter for its performance. II. Exercises of strength demand great muscular ex- penditure, but they produce all the conditions necessary for energetic tissue-repair. They need very little work of co-ordination and do not demand a frequent repetition of movement. They occasion less disturbance in the nerves than exercises of speed, and do not demand, like exercises of skill, great brain work. Forced labour is nearly always performed by the aid of slow and sustained contraction. The muscular fibre of a wrestler is tense in one direction for sometimes an entire minute ; the muscles of a fencer are changing every moment from repose to action, and moving the limbs in the most varied directions. Powerful and sustained con- tractions favour the nutrition of the muscular fibre. The nutrition of muscle is more intense in slow contractions, because the flow of blood is more regular and more prolonged. Exercises of strength and forced labour, in spite of the great quantity of work they need, have little influence on the brain, they affect the functions of nutrition much more than those of innervation. The energetic and sustained muscular contractions which