EXERCISE FOR ELDERLY PEOPLE. 775 



guards were sometimes seen, from having run too long in the 

 face of threatened suffocation, to fall in their places, struck with 

 pulmonary congestion. 



Exercises of force would also be as badly chosen for elderly 

 men as exercises in speed, and for the same reason that they 

 fatigue the blood-vessels and the heart. Every muscular act that 

 requires a considerable display of force inevitably provokes the 

 physiological act called effort. A porter in lifting a heavy burden 

 is obliged to make an effort, as does also the gymnast who exe- 

 cutes an athletic movement with his apparatus. These are com- 

 mon facts of observation, and impressions which everybody has 

 felt. If we put all possible energy into any movement, respiration 

 stops at once, the muscles of the abdomen stretch, and the whole 

 figure is stiffened, while the veins swell and mark salient sinuosi- 

 ties on the neck and forehead. I have explained the mechanism 

 of effort in my book on the Physiology of Effort. It is enough to 

 recollect here that it increases in excessive proportions the tension 

 of the blood-vessels. Effort is translated, in fact, by a consider- 

 able pressure of the ribs on the lungs, and through this upon the 

 heart and large vessels ; under the influence of this pressure there 

 is a reflow of the mass of the blood toward the smaller vessels 

 and distention of their walls. When these vessels are tending to 

 lose their elasticity, in consequence of the modification of struct- 

 ure observed in mature age, the violence to which the effort sub- 

 jects them results in the aggravation of their inert state. In the 

 same way the " fatigue '' of a steel spring which has had too much 

 to bear is increased. again after every violent pressure to which it 

 is subjected. Nothing wears out a man who has reached maturity 

 like great physical efforts, because nothing can more than effort 

 aggravate the effects of that defect of nutrition which is called 

 sclerosis. 



In some cases arterial sclerosis is nothing but the gradual and 

 slow consequence of the advance of age, but assumes a rapid pace 

 that makes it a fearful malady. In such cases we can see young 

 persons presenting the same physiological reactions against fa- 

 tigue as the elderly man. One of the first symptoms of that 

 acute aging of the arteries which is called arterial sclerosis is the 

 dyspnoea of effort.* All elderly men are, in different degrees, 

 tainted with arterial degeneracy, and all ought to avoid excessive 

 muscular effort if they would not wear out their arteries before 

 the time that is, would not grow old prematurely ; for every 

 man is " of the age of his arteries." 



While the elderly man has less capacity for some forms of 

 exercise than the younger adult, he has no less need than the 



* See Euchard, Maladies du Cceur et des Vaisseaux, 1SS9. 



