INOCULATION FOR ENERGY.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 22 November 1924, Page 13

INOCULATION FOR ENERGY.

LABORATORY TESTS TO ABOLISH

FATIGUE

Researches now going forward in a university laboratory on the Continent hold out promises which, if fulfilled, will revolutionise human activities. * They aim- at nothing less than the abolition of tiredness, enabling men to walk-all day. and still be fresh, to play football for hours and go on playing, to think nothing of four rounds of golf on end, to slave in a factory all day and need no rest afterwards. A.s yet the experiments have not passed beyond the stage of the lower animals, but here their achievement is extraordinary. It is necessary in order to understand the logic and hopefulness of this work to know a little of the physiology of muscular exeTtion. Why do we tire after exercise? It is a matter of poisons generated by the muscles, in their activity. The process may be likened to ‘an overstoked fire, the chimney of which becomes clogged with the products of the burning coal.

The new idea does not prevent the formation of these products, the substances given out by aching museles. but it seeks a. counter-substance which absoibs tliemy-as quickly as they arc formed, and thus allows the muscles to go on functioning. The experiments have been made with rats and guinea-pigs. By an ingenious ’arrangement the animals had to keep, moving on a rotating platform. When.through their fatigue they ceased to move they fell off.

Those. injected with the new musclepreserving. substance, however, were able to stop on apparently ad infinitum. It needs no imagination to see the wonderful scope of this new discovery if it could be extended to include brain and nerve fatigue as well as that of muscle.

\ Sleep, the great natural restorative, will become a very secondary consideration, aftcl man’s activities, mental and muscular, might know no bounds.