History of Physiology Group Lecture

Lecture — Tuesday, April 24, 2024 — 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM — Headquarter Hotel, Room Grand Ballroom 3-4
History of Physiology Group — Chair: Peter B. Raven — Co-Chair:

According to C.M. Tipton the concept that exercise is medicine can be traced back to time of the Aniquities i.e. 3000 to 300 BC during which time the Homo sapiens (humans) underwent an evolutionary transformation  from quadruped to bipedal movement with an upright posture. However, it was during the renaissance period  from the 16th to the 18th centuries that the science of human function, i.e. physiology, was firmly established as a science, instead of the mystical explanations based upon the Flux of Humors proposed by Galen. It was in the late 18th and early 19th century that the discipline of exercise physiology was established at the University of Copenhagen by August Krogh, D.Sc. and Johannes Lindhard M.D. These two investigators were the primary force behind the concept of Exercise Is Medicine.  Prior to, during and after World War II a number of U.S. Academic  Institutions followed Harvard's Fatigue Laboratory (1927-1946) in developing a group of physiological scientists with an interest in investigating the physiology of exercise (applied physiology). One group of special focus to this seminar was initiated by Carlton Chapman M.D. at the fledgling Southwestern Medical Center, subsequently UTSWMC. Chapman recruited two young Scandinavians, Bengt Saltin, M.D., Ph.D. from the Karolinska lnstitute in Sweden and C. Gunnar Blomqvist M.D. from the University of Lund in Sweden to join Jere H. Mitchell M.D. (a Texan from Longview) at UTSWMC to embark on a ground breaking investigation requiring five healthy subjects to go to bed for 21days without any physical activity, followed by boot camp-like physical training led by Saltin to recover their fitness and documenting the pliabilty of the human phenotype. This collaboration between Mitchell and Saltin coninued for more than 50 years and was ongoing at Saltin's death on Sept. 12 2014. The Danish National Research Foundation founded the The Copenhagen Muscle Reseach Center in 1994-2003 at the University of Copenhagen and appointed Bengt Saltin as the Director of the center. This seminar will provide insight into the exercise physiology research of the CMRC and its collaborations with UTSWMC and other institutions in the state of Texas.

Speakers

• Bengt Saltin, M.D., D.Sci. (1935-2014): Exercise is medicine.
  Peter B. Raven — Dept. of Physiology, Univ. of North Texas Hlth. Sci. Ctr.