The Health bulletin [serial] - University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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April, 192", The Health Bulletin 31
More Service, liess Cost
The public needs moi-e medical service,
and the furnishing of this service
at a cost within the ability of the average
person to paj- constitutes the most
important problem facing medicine today.
If the private physician will furnish
preventive medical service, there
will be no need for the public itself to
do so through a system of State medicine.
In medicine, as in every form of
life, evolution is taking place and nothing
we can say or do will impede the
progress of this evolution. We do have
it within our power, however, to guide
the progress or evolution of medicine
along those lines which are to the best
interest of the public. The medical
profession and the public health forces
have a mutual interest in this problem.
This mutual interest demands concerted
efforts between those two groups. Each
group has a responsibility to the other
and to the public.
The private practitioner, through the
local medical societies, must interest
himself in the health problems of the
community. He must give to the community
the advice and the guidance
necessary for it to meet properly its
community health needs, and he must
practice preventive medicine.
The public health ofl3cer must secure
the wholehearted support of the practicing
physician in the conduct of his
health program. The cooperation of the
medical profession is necessary if the
best progress is to be made in the solution
of any health problem.
It is only by such concerted and
united effort on the part of medical and
public-health agencies that the science
of medicine can be of more complete
service to humanity. The Xation's
Health.
NEW STUDIES OF THE CIRCULATION
Henderson and Haggard, of Yale
University, have for many years been
giving special attention to the study
of the blood and the circulation. They
have recently perfected a method by
which the amount of blood circulated
by the heart can be measured with a
considerable degree of accuracy. They
find that the amount of blood circulated
through the lungs is practically equal
to the amount of air inhaled and may
reach the enormous volume of nine
gallons per minute. By exercise, the
amount of air passing through the
lungs may be increased to ten times
the ordinary amount and the volume
of blood circulated to five times the
ordinary.
The increased demand of oxygen occasioned
by vigorous exercise is met
by the body in three ways: (1) an increased
pulse rate; (2) an increase in
the heart stroke, that is, in the amount
of blood sent out by the heart at each
beat; and (3) by an increased utilization
of oxygen, which is indicated by an
increased difference in oxygen content
between the arterial and the venous
blood. This difference is ordinarily
about four per cent. Up to a certain
point,
the increased pulse rate and increase
in the heart stroke may increase
the oxygen supply sufficiently to prevent
an increase in the difference in the
oxygen content of the arterial and
venous blood.
In the violent exercises of athletes,
the amount of oxygen conveyed to the
tissues may become insufficient. The
development of this condition of insufficiency
is the limiting factor in
athletics. The same condition develops
in cases of advanced organic disease of
the heart when the heart muscle becomes
incapable of doing the work required
of it.
decrease in
In the case of athletes, the
the body's store of oxygen
is quickly made good by the succeeding
rest. In the case of heart disease, the
inhalation of oxygen may prove a valuable
resource by which life may be prolonged.—From
Good Health, Battle
Creek, Mich.