ASSESSMENT OF EFFICIENCY 



497 



the determination of the efficiency both of isohitcd muscle and of 

 the body as a whole. 



If the organism be considered as a whole and its efficiency 

 determined, it is found that, although it is high, it is never as 

 high as the results which have been obtained experimentally with 

 isolated muscle. This result is not to be wondered at when the 

 methods of attacking the problem are considered. In the case of 

 the isolated muscle, its position, the amount of work to be done 

 and the mode and time of stimulation can all be accurately 

 controlled, conditions which are, for the most part, lacking when 

 the whole organism has to be dealt with. 



Modern work has shown very considerable agreement as regards 

 the degree of efficiency, as is shown by the following table : 



TABLE LXXXVIII 



Gross and Net Efficiency of the Body as a Whole 



The outstanding difficulty in the assessment of the net efficiency 

 is the selection of the proper base line for comparison. It is 

 immaterial whether the work done be that of marching or mountain 

 climbing, of turning an ergostat or a bicycle ergometer, the same 

 difficulty crops up. As the bicycle ergometer has been most fre- 

 quently used in the modern experiments it will be dealt with here. 



In the determination of the mechanical efficiency with this 

 machine no less than five base lines may be used though they are 

 not all of equal value. In this type of ergometer, where the work 

 to be done can be readily altered by increasing the resistance to 

 be overcome, it is a comparatively simple matter to devise a 

 wide range of experiments in which the effective muscular work 

 can be varied. The only difficulty lies in the selection of the base 

 line. If the work standard be taken as that of the subject sitting 

 on the bicycle performing a definite measured amount of work. 



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