Physiology of Bodily Exercise

Abstract

THIS book at first sight reminds one of the saying that a German takes a year to make a research, and a week to write an account of it, while a Frenchman takes a year to write a book on one week's work. The only original part consists of a few experiments on the influence of fatigue in producing increased excretion of urates in the urine. The author ascribes most of the ill effects of fatigue to the presence of uric acid in the blood—in fact, considers a fatigued man to be in exactly the same condition as a gouty man. His observations, however, seem to have been very few in number, and the analyses were all made for him by a friendly chemist. Still, it is unfair to the book to regard it as a contribution to the advance of physiological science. It is really an excellent little account of the physiology of bodily exercise, and its rôle in the maintenance of health, by a medical practitioner. It seems to be chiefly culled from the standard French works on general physiology, and on the physiology of movement. The author has digested his materials well, and so produced a very readable and lucid account of his subject. For a book of its class, it is remarkably free from mistakes, though physiologists might not agree with him in his account of the production of breathlessness or the causation of gout.

Physiology of Bodily Exercise.

By Fernand Lagrange (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, and Co., 1889.)