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MY HRKATHING SYSTEM

heavy weight- or other feat approaching the limit of the individual’s power—is to be performed, it is necessary to brace most of the muscles of the trunk, in order that the lirnbs (for instance, tlie arms which lift the heavy weight) may liave a solid support. But during this stilfening of the trunk almost everybody will hołd the breath after having taken a fuli inhalation. The heart will beat very quickly, because the effort of lifting will be so great. But it will receive less and less oxidised blood, because the lungs will have stopped their work when the breath is retaitied. The congeśted red face and the swelling of the neck show how the venous system has been overfdled.

When at last the effort is over, and the air is cxpelled front the ltmgs, the blood will rush suddenly iii to the auricles and ventricles and over-dilate the weak walls, especially on the right side, wherc they are thinnest. And, if often repeated, this acute dilatation of the heart ntay become chronic.

This bad form of enlargement of the heart should not be confounded witli that sort of enlargement which arises when the muscles of the heart, or the walls themselves, are madę thicker, stronger, and morę elastic, as is the case when proper feats of endurance and other good games are performed in a sensible manner.

Some doctors, especially on the Contincnt, where the opportunity of cxamining healthy athletes was formerly only very limited, would cali stjeh a strong and big heart " hypertrophied.” But this name ought not to be used to signify that the heart in ąuestion is diseased. It is, on the contrary, the strong and big heart of the athlete which is of the right sort, eveti if it is morę seldont scen by doctors than the so-callcd " normal ” heart of ordinary weak people.

1 hope my readers will now understand that it is quite wrong to cali a weak or diseased heart an " athlete’s heart.”