The blood ptosis test and its use in experimental work in hygiene

Abstract

The modern health campaign has three parts.

1. The cure of disease,

2. The direct prevention of disease by sanitation, quarantine, instruction in hygiene, and the like, and

3. Euthenics.

This last includes physical training, play, and all measures calculated to increase resistance to disease and bodily efficiency.

The success of health and vitality increasing measures is difficult to estimate on account of the lack of tests. It is possible to measure the result of long-continued activities such as physical training, gymnastics, play, athletics, and good ventilation on the one hand, and fatigue-producing activities, such as school life of various kinds, on the other hand, by noting the increase or decrease of incidence of disease, and absence from school, and the percentage of hemoglobin, etc. These tests are difficult to control because they take a long time, and other factors cannot always be successfully eliminated or controlled. It is highly desirable to obtain some test of some important body function which will show clearly and rapidly by its variations, the beneficial or depressive effect of various conditions supposed to affect health. Such a test will be useful in proportion to the importance of the function tested and its accuracy in recording the variations of this function.

The following test promises to fulfill these conditions. It is well known that the splanchnic veins are very capacious, and if vaso-tone is relaxed, they fill at the expense of the rest of the body. The vaso control of the splanchnic area is in man, comparatively recently adjusted to the erect position. As such, it is easily wearied and easily damaged by unhygienic influences which decrease the efficiency of the sympathetic nervous system. The efficiency of this control is, I believe, measured by placing the subject in a horizontal position and taking the systolic pressure in the brachial artery.