The Bicycle and the Heart
DR. BEYER’S investigation of the influence of bicycling on the heart has convinced him that the bicycle has a specifically injurious action on that organ. The heart in the young is particularly subject to this deleterious influence on account of the unfavorable conditions of the blood pressure in youth. Hypertrophy of the heart and nervous heart disturbances are the typical bicycler’s affections. It has been found in Germany that the number of cases of acute articular rheumatism among the recruits has materially diminished of late years, while the number of heart affections has tripled. In one army corps, out of two hundred and thirty-three recruits with various heart affections, forty-one had been bicyclers, as also nine of the eighteen patients with hypertrophy of the heart, and eight out of the thirty-seven patients with nervous irregularity in the heart action. In another corps the proportion was 37.5 per cent in two hundred and ninety-three cases of heart affections, with twenty-three out of the fifty-two cases of hypertrophy and nine out of the twenty-two of nervous irregularity. He found further that among these recruits those who had previously led a sedentary life formed the largest contingent of heart affections among bicyclers. On Sundays and holidays they took long bicycle trips, with overexertion of the heart. Next in number were the workmen who rode the bicycle to and from work. The exertion after the fatigue of the day’s work caused overexertion of the heart. The recruiting officers attribute the increase in heart disease among the young men to the lesser hardiness of youth in our day and to the epidemic of influenza. Beyer suggests that unwise or immoderate bicycle riding is a third and no less important factor.— N. Y. Christian Advocate.