The effects of severe muscular exertion, sudden and prolonged, in young adolescents / by W. Collier.

  • Collier, William.
Date:
[1904 or 5?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The effects of severe muscular exertion, sudden and prolonged, in young adolescents / by W. Collier. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    5/12 (page 5)
    about 300 yards from the finish, and running quite by himself, he collapsed, and with very great difficulty tottered to the tape, and was supported to the pavilion, where he lay for nearly three-quarters of an hour in a semi-conscious condition, and was a considerable time before he had sufficiently regained his normal condition to leave the ground. .1 was not present at the race, and so am obliged to fall back on his own statement. A year passed, and he was most anxious to race again, but was obliged to confess that when it came to running hard many of the old symptoms, to which before his break¬ down he had been a complete stranger, began to assert themselves, and in my own consulting room, I was now and again able to bring out the murmur to which I have referred. I have no doubt that this was another example of the dilatation of the right side of the heart produced by pro¬ longed muscular exertion. I might cite many other cases very similar to these which have come under my own observation. Heart Strain in Girls. 1 would here call attention to a form of heart strain by no means uncommon among girls and young women. We find it most frequently among young domestic servants who have a large amount of running up and down stairs, and it is generally associated with a certain amount of anaemia, and probably is due to an atonic condition of the heart muscle induced by the impoverished blood. The most prominent symptoms are breathlessness on exertion out of all proportion to the anaemia and excessive fre¬ quency and tumultuous action of the heart. In these cases we may give iron in various forms for weeks with very little benefit; it is only when we insist on rest in the horizontal position for at least two or three hours in the day that our patients begin to make real improvement. Often it is necessary to keep them in bed for a time. The rapid growth of girls between the ages of 14 and 18, associated with marked functional changes, renders them, I believe, particularly liable to minor forms of dilatation of the right side of the heart. It is well to remember this, as in recent years hockey, swimming, cycling, and tennis have been taken up with such vigour by them, and are at times overdone, though on the whole the effect on the health is very beneficial.