ATHLETICS PRODUCE NO BAD EFFECTS ON HEART

Dr. Roger I. Lee '02, professor of hygiene, in an article in the Alumni Bulletin affirms that the athletic heart is normal and that the usual claim that the athlete's heart is enlarged because of his activities is wrong. He draws his conclusions from examinations made upon more than 2,000 students, including the members of the University crew. Only 20 per cent. of this total were found to have abnormal hearts and there were very few athletes among them.

Dr. Lee concludes his article as follows:

Our investigations should not be interpreted as indicating that medical supervision over athletics is not necessary. At Harvard University men showing any degree of damage of the heart are not allowed to indulge in competitive rowing. The men are kept under careful and trained medical supervision. These factors should be borne in mind in the interpretation of our results and in their application to other universities.

However, it can be emphatically stated that the athletic heart when subjected to the careful investigation of instruments of precision is usually shown to be a normal heart. A good proportion of the oarsmen examined had been told previously for one reason or another that they were suffering from athletic hearts; yet our investigation failed to confirm the presence of any abnormality that was not entirely consistent with a normal heart.

I see in the course of a year many young men who are carrying the burden of a diagnosis of athletic or strained heart. Thus far, in the absence of a previously damaged heart due to some inflammatory condition of the valves, I have been unable to confirm the diagnosis of an abnormal heart. My feeling is that much harm is being done by the popular impression that athletics are a frequent cause of heart disease. I have tried to show that in some aspects at least this diagnosis has been based upon incorrect criteria. I find considerable comfort in the vigorous statements of Sir James MacKenzie, the eminent English authority on heart disease, that he doubts the existence of the athletic heart and refers to it as "an unfortunate bogey."

It is not possible to dispel this bogey at once, neither is it probably desirable. It is necessary that for the welfare of college students, who are participating in athletics, further intensive investigation should be carried out, and every effort should be made to determine whether in athletics there lurks any possible damage to the heart of the participant. There is ample opportunity for further investigation in this important field in which my own studies refer intensively only to a part.