i4 Colorado Experiment Station. 
pasture on the mountain grasses and in the winter when the food 
is entirely of hay cut in the parks. Furthermore, the hay in North 
Park is quite different from that of South Park. Hay from both 
places is shipped out in large quantities to lower altitudes but there 
is no evidence that it has caused any such disease. 
.Most investigators of the effects of high altitude, agree that 
unacclimated people passing from a low to a high altitude notice 
that the respiration and heart-beat markedly increase, that there is 
extreme weakness on slight exertion and even fainting and hem¬ 
orrhage.* Is it not conceivable that at this time extra exertion or 
excitement would seriously dilate the heart, which dilatation might 
become so extreme as to cause degeneration of the muscle walls 
with chronic insufficiency, resulting finally in generalized dropsy? 
Several cases of dilatation of the heart in man have been attributed 
to ordinary exertion in high altitudes before becoming accustomed 
to the changed conditions. 
Babcock in his book entitled “Disease of the Heart” details 
a case where a gentleman of fifty-seven, who was accustomed to a 
low altitude brought on an acute dilatation by carrying a traveling 
bag for several blocks in Denver (altitude 5,280). He died some 
two years later, with typical symptoms of chronic cardiac dilatation 
the inference being that the injury to the heart had taken place at 
the time of the extra exertion in Denver. 
The same author attributes another case to an exhausting 
journey through a snow storm at an altitude of eighteen thousand 
feet. 
Let us consider the experience of a trainload of wild Texas 
steers brought from sea level to an altitude of, say ninety-five hun¬ 
dred feet, unloaded amid considerable excitement and driven to a 
distant ranch. Already the altitude with its rarefied atmosphere 
has made it necessary for the heart to beat much faster. Add to 
this the excitement and exertion incident to the animals being wild, 
and it is not surprising that some of them would permanently in¬ 
jure the heart muscle so that in some weeks or months it would fail 
to perform its work. Presuming that a little later the animals were 
driven up rocky trails and through thick forests to an altitude of 
from eleven thousand to thirteen thousand feet, and with this ex¬ 
cessive exertion the wonder is that so few of them are permanently 
injured. 
* The Anglo-American expedition to the top of Pike’s Peak as given by the editor 
of the Journal of the American Medical Association reported as follows: “The more 
immediate effects after arrival were blueness of the face and lips, nausea, intestinal 
disturbance, headache, fainting in some persons, and periodic breathing, besides great 
hyperpnea on exertion or holding the breath a few seconds.” 
