Why? The Science of Athletics

WHY?-THE SCIENCE OF ATHLETICS on the wall of the bowel which pass it to the blood– vessels they contain, so that this nutritive material becomes a part of the blood, is passed through the liver and cir– culated round the body to supply the needs of the various organs. If a drop of human blood is examined microscopically it will be found to contain innumerable tiny red cor– puscles in a ·watery-yellow serum, or plasma, which is the liquid food of the body and also the medium for carrying away soluble waste matter ; the red corpuscles are the oxygen-carriers. In a normal male there are about twenty-five trillions of these red blood corpuscles. The importance of the red corpuscles, of which our blood is so largely composed, can be realized easily when it is understood that, oxygen being a very insoluble gas, and an athlete in action requiring quite a gallon of oxygen per minute, if we had no red corpuscles, the heart would have to pump some goo gallons of blood to convey one gallon of oxygen every minute to supply that athlete's needs. No heart, of course, could cope with that amount of fluid. The oxygen-carrying capacity of the red corpuscles is increased by the presence in them of hcemoglobin, the pigment of the blood, which combines readily with oxygen. In all living cells, then~ is to be found also a substance called cytochrome which contains an atom of iron. This iron-containing pigment is chiefly concerned with the carriage of oxygen ; and, since there is so little iron in our systems, what there is in the human body may well be regarded as a "precious metal". It is thought that there are something like 2000 atoms to the molecule in the hcemoglobin, but it is ridiculous to believe that, once the quantity is normal, we can increase the amount of iron in our blood, and thereby improve our oxygen supply, by eating iron-containing foods. The corpuscles have their origin, mainly, in the red marrow of the bones, and are broken up in the liver or the spleen after being in use for a few weeks.