SCIENTIFIC PROCEEDINGS 



Abstracts of Communications. 

 Seventy-first meeting. 



Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, December 15, 1915. 

 President Lask in the chair. 

 29 (1093) 



The circulatory reaction to graduated work as a test of the heart's 

 functional capacity. 



By Theodore B. Barringer, Jr., M.D. (by invitation). 



[From the Medical Service of the House of Relief and the Department 

 of Physiology of Columbia University, New York.] 



As a preliminary to a new form of exercise treatment for 

 cardiac insufficiency which we have described elsewhere, we 

 investigated the test of the heart's functional capacity described 

 by Graiipner. The essential features of his test are the deductions 

 made from the form of the curve of the systolic blood-pressure 

 after measured amounts of work. Although we were unable to 

 confirm his most important results, we believe that the method 

 of making frequent readings of the pulse-rate and systolic pressure 

 after measured amounts of work furnishes the key to this problem 

 of determining the heart's efficiency. 



Our work may be divided into two parts. The first consisted 

 in experiments on 23 normal persons. In three persons the 

 graduated work was performed by means of a bicycle ergometer 

 of the type described by Krogh and Lindhard, 1 and in 20 persons 

 by means of dumb-bell and bar movements. 



The second part comprised experiments on 32 patients suf- 

 fering from cardiac insufficiency. The ergometer was used in 

 two patients, and dumb-bell work in the remaining 30. 



1 Skandinavisches Arckiv fur Physiologic 1913, XXX, p. 378. 



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