The effect of exercise on the hæmoglobin with reference to the value of rest in the treatment of anæmia / by Wilfrid Edgecombe.

  • Edgecombe, Wilfrid.
Date:
[1898?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The effect of exercise on the hæmoglobin with reference to the value of rest in the treatment of anæmia / by Wilfrid Edgecombe. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    2. Active exercise increases the extent of the day fall and night rise. 3. Active exercise stimulates a slight over-production of haemoglobin. 4. Passive exercise (massage) diminishes the volume of the blood, but has no effect in diminishing or increasing the amount of haemoglobin. 5. Rest reduces the extent of the day fall in worth, repre¬ senting a diminished destruction of haemoglobin. The bearing of these facts on the treatment of anaemia is obvious, providing as they do a physiological foundation for the well-known value of rest in bed in the treatment of that affection. Inasmuch, however, as the effect of exercise is to stimulate the production of haemeglobin, while that of rest is to lessen its destruction, it may be objected that the conclusions to be drawn from these data are in mutual con¬ tradiction. In must be borne in mind, though, that the observations were made on normal subjects, in whom the temporary increased destruction of haemoglobin brought about by exercise is fully met and repaired by increased formation. To complete the investigation it is necessary to determine by diurnal observation of the blood of an anaemic subject taking considerable exercise, whether the reproduction of the haemo¬ globin would be sufficient to make good the loss occasioned by exercise. The undesirability of keeping a patient suffi¬ ciently long under observation without treatment has pre¬ vented me examining this point. From clinical experience we may infer with tolerable certainty that construction would fall short of destruction, or at least would not be in excess of it as is the case in health. In other words, that the already seriously diminished amount of haemoglobin would be unable to respond to the call made upon it by exercise, so that gra¬ dually the total amount would be further lessened. Rest, on the other hand, by removing the drain, would enable the con¬ structive process to exceed the destructive, and the store of haemoglobin to be gradually built up. Mode of Observation. The instruments used in the collection of these data were the haemoglobinometer and haemocytometer devised by Oliver.1 References. 1 Croonian Lectures, Lancet, vol i, 1896 2 Compt. Rend. Soc. Biol. Pans, tomes cxi, cxii. 3 Compt. Rend, de I’Acad. des Sciences, 1895, vol. ii, No. 6. 4 Allbutt’s System of Med., vol. 1, p. 378. 5 “Chlorosis,” by E. Lloyd Jones, p. 24. 6 “ Ueber die Ursache der Heilwirkung des Aderlasses, bei Chlorese,” Wien. Med. Presse, 1893. WEUCOMF INSTITUTE UP' ■■’ Col! \ . 4 w£TT55\