FATIGUE THEORIES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 35, 11 February 1935, Page 6

FATIGUE THEORIES.

We have been told so much about the fatigue poisons which are manufactured as we work and which are supposed so ffer to reduce our efficiency that we are virtually good for nothing at the end of a day that the revelations made by Professor H. M. Johnson and Dr. G. E. Weigand (Mellon Institute) before the American Association for the Advancement of Science come with something of a shock. Instead of being fagged out when 5 or 6 o'clock comes we are actually in better condition to think and perform tasks in which skill is required than when we leaped from bed in the morning telling the world how great it is to be alive. For two years Johnson and Weigand have been experimenting with college who had to arrange letters into a code. At night the average per"formance was 14.1 per cent better than in the same morning and 11.7 better than on the following morning. From these results the conclusion is reached that the body cannot /be i - egarded as a simple chemical machine which does little more than generate fatigue poisons when it is working. There is an interaction of many parte, an interaction, moreover, so complicated that it has not yet been laid bare. Apparently there is something like a "second wind," physically and psychically speaking. This comes to the rescue as the day rolls on.