Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 12.djvu/755

Rh tissue may be repaired if food can be assimilated in sufficient quantity, but in my experiments it was not repaired. The most important question to determine experimentally in this connection is with regard to the influence of excessive and prolonged muscular exercise upon the excretion of nitrogen. It is shown experimentally that such exercise always increases the excretion of nitrogen to a very marked degree, under normal conditions of alimentation; but the proportionate quantity to the nitrogen of food is great when the nitrogen of food remains the same as at rest, and is not so great, naturally, when the nitrogen of food is increased. In the latter case, the excessive waste of the tissues is in part, or it may be wholly, repaired by the increased quantity of food. Experiments upon excessive exertion with a non-nitrogenous diet are made under conditions of the system that are not physiological; and the want of nitrogen in the food in such observations satisfactorily accounts for the diminished excretion of nitrogen.

"VI. By systematic exercise of the general muscular system or of particular muscles, with proper intervals of repose for repair and growth, muscles may be developed in size, hardness, power, and endurance. The only reasonable theory that can be offered in explanation of this process is the following: While exercise increases the activity of disassimilation of the muscular substance, a necessary accompaniment of this is an increased activity in the circulation in the muscles, for the purpose of removing the products of their physiological wear. This increased activity of the circulation is attended with an increased activity of the nutritive processes, provided the supply of nutriment be sufficient, and provided also, that the exercise be succeeded by proper periods of rest. It is in this way only that we can comprehend the process of development of muscles by training; the conditions in training being exercise, rest following the exercise, and appropriate alimentation, the food furnishing nitrogenized matters to supply the waste of the nitrogenized parts of the tissues. This theory involves the idea that muscular work consumes a certain part of the muscular substance, which is repaired by food. The theory that the muscles simply transform the elements of food into force directly, these elements not becoming at any time a part of the muscular substance, is not in accordance with the facts known with regard to training.

"VII. All that is known with regard to the nutrition and disassimilation of muscles during ordinary or extraordinary work teaches that such work is always attended with destruction of muscular substance, which may not be completely repaired by food, according to the amount of work performed and the quantity and kind of alimentation.

"VIII. In my experiments upon a man walking three hundred and seventeen and one-half miles in five consecutive days, who at the beginning of the five days had no superfluous fat, the loss of weight was actually 3.45 pounds, while the total amount of nitrogen discharged from the body in excess of the nitrogen of food taken for these five days, assuming that three parts of nitrogen represent one hundred parts of muscular substance, as has been shown by analysis to be the fact, represented 3.037 pounds of muscular substance. This close correspondence between the actual loss of weight and the loss that should have occurred, as deduced from a calculation of the nitrogen discharged in excess of the nitrogen of food, seems to show very clearly that, during these five days of excessive muscular work, a certain amount of muscular substance was consumed which had not been repaired, and that this loss could be calculated with reasonable accuracy from the excess of nitrogen excreted.

"IX. Finally, experiments upon the human subject show that the direct source of muscular power is to be looked for in the muscular system itself. The