NATURE 



19: 



THURSDAY, JANUARY 2, 1902. 



THE PHYSIOLOGICAL EFFECTS OF ROUTE 

 MARCHING. 



Studien ~u einer Physiologie des Marsches. By Dr. 

 Zuntz, Professor of Physiology in the Royal Agricultural 

 College, Berlin, and Dr. Schumburg, Oberstabsarzt 

 1st CI. and Privatdocent, Hanover. (Vol. vi. of the 

 Bihliothck von Coler, Sammlung von Werken aus dem 

 Bereiche dcr Militiir-mediciniscJien Gcbiete. Edited 

 by O. Scheming.) Pp. viii + 361, and one chart. 

 (Berlin: August Hirschwald, 1901.) 



THE " Bibliothek v. Coler'' was commenced in March 

 last to celebrate the seventieth anniversary of the 

 birth of Generalstabsarzt Alwin v. Coler, who held the 

 post of Director-General of the .-Vrmy Medical Service in 

 Germany from the year 1SS9 until his death in September 

 last. \'. Coler was intimately associated with the develop- 

 ment of that service ever since its foundation in 1868, and 

 it may truthfully be said that the fine esprit de corps 

 which exists in it to-day, and which is characterised by a 

 determination to maintain a high standard of culture and 

 scientific attainment amongst its members, is due to his 

 influence. The collection of works which have been 

 called after him admirably demonstrates what this influ- 

 ence meant. It is edited by Generalarzt Otto .Scheming, 

 v. Coler's colleague and ally, and some twenty-six volumes 

 are already announced. They are an excellent expression 

 of the scientific work of the German Military Medical 

 Service, as carried out under v. Coler's guidance and 

 inspiration, as well as of the intimate relationship that 

 exists between army doctors and the teaching professors 

 in Germany. 



The authors of the \olume under review are well 

 known. Prof. Zuntz's pre\ious work on metabolism is 

 authoritative, and Dr. Schumburg has acquired a wide 

 reputation for original investigations on a variety of 

 military medical subjects. The volume is a record of 

 careful and elaborate observations, made by them, on the 

 physiological effects of route marching. In some of their 

 experiments, notably those involving complicated che- 

 mical analyses, they were helped by Prof. Munk, Dr. 

 Nichter, Dr. Frenzel and others. 



The introductory chapter is an historical sketch of 

 previous anatomical and physiological work in the same 

 direction from the time of Fabricius de Aquapendente, 

 Gassendi and Gorelli to the more modern investigations 

 of Marey, Vierordt, Braune and Fischer. This resume 

 is fairly complete and interesting, but the work done 

 in England is not well represented. 



The remaining chapters are an account of the authors' 

 own observations and are of e.xceptional interest and 

 merit. Five students of the Kaiser-Wilhelm-.Vcademie 

 (formerly known as the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Institut), the 

 cadet school for medical students destined for the mili- 

 tary medical service of their country, volunteered for the 

 experiments. During April, May, June and July they 

 marched, at frequent intervals, a distance of 2475 km. 

 without altering the route or the pace. The inarches 

 were commenced, as a rule, at 7 o'clock in the morning, 

 occasionally at 5 o'clock, and two halts were made, one 

 NO. 1679, VOL. 65] 



of ten minutes and the other of half an hour for break- 

 fast. The service uniform and accoutrements were 

 worn, and, with the exception of the weather, the only 

 variation in the condition of the marches was in the 

 weights carried. In fact, the experiments were conducted 

 to determine the limit of weight which the soldier can 

 carry without interference with his capacity for striking, 

 and striking hard, at the end of a day's march. Both 

 authors were members of a German War Ofiice commit- 

 tee appointed to decide this point by physiological ex- 

 periment in 1894, and, although the observations recorded 

 in this volume were conducted during that year, they do 

 not appear to have been made public until now. 



It would be difficult in a short review to detail all the 

 points of interest in the volume. They are many. Several 

 of the more important scientific details are contained in 

 tables interspersed throughout the text or brought together 

 in appendices. If the headings of the columns of figures 

 in these tables indicated more precisely what the figure? 

 represented, the physiologist would be able to study the 

 records and draw his own conclusions from them without 

 much difficulty. Unfortunately, this is not always the 

 case, and it is often impossible to follow the tabulated 

 records without closely reading the text ; and, as is apt to 

 be the case in German works of this kind, the latter is 

 full of argument, com parisons and historical comments- 

 which tend to confuse the simple statements of fact. 

 At the same time, it is only fair to say that these inter- 

 polations are well-balanced criticisms of the results of the 

 experiments, and that the authors' conception of their own 

 laborious work is dignified and modest in the extreme. 



The e.xtent of this work may be estimated from the 

 fact that immediately before and after each march, some- 

 times during the march and on days of rest, careful 

 examination was made of all the organs and functions of 

 the body that were likely to be influenced by the carrying 

 of a heavily loaded knapsack. This included sphygmo- 

 graphic tracings, enumeration of blood corpuscles, 

 estimation of the specific gravity of the blood, experi- 

 ments on the reaction of muscles and nerves, measure- 

 ments of vital capacity and records of variations in 

 urinary constituents. These formed one series of obser- 

 vations only. A second and more complicated series 

 was carried out, in the case of two of the students only, 

 in order to determine the effect of the marches on 

 metabolism, and one must be content to present here a 

 few of the practical results of these investigations without 

 attempting to exemplify the full extent and scope of the 

 work. 



After graduated marches with lighter weights, the 

 students were made to carry knapsacks with loads of 

 22, 27 and 31 kg., and the physiological effects of the 

 lightest, intermediate and heaviest of these loads were 

 compared. 



The general condition of the students improved, 

 excessive fat disappeared, while the body-weight 

 was reduced by 15 to 3'5 kg. The sphygmographic 

 tracings showed that cardiac systole was pro- 

 longed and diastole shortened as the weights carried 

 were increased. This is exemplified by the use of a 



quotient derived from the formula — , where D represents 

 the durations of the diastole and S that of the systole in 



K 



