User:Eighteuro/sandbox

Harvard Fatigue Laboratory
Havard Fatigue Laboratory (1927-1947) was a research centre designed to investigate the physiological, sociological and psychological impacts of fatigue caused by daily activities, and those on the conditions that industry workers faced. Founded in 1927, the laboratory was constructed in the basement of Morgan Hall at Harvard University and described as a unique research facility that focused on a holistic approach to physiology, rather than systems- or organ-oriented. The laboratory was shut down in 1947 after the Second World War, as university policies halted the research facility from seeking government funds and the President of Harvard no longer saw its worth.

The Fatigue Laboratory was seen as an instigator of exercise physiology as an academic discipline in part due to the legacy of the researchers that were once employed at the facility - forming and leading other exercise laboratories around the country after its closure. Its academic output also contributed to this legacy, with researchers publishing over 300 peer-reviewed research studies during its 20 years of operation.

Government funded projects during the Second World War realigned the laboratory's scientific endeavours from industry related research to research that involved the physiological environment soldiers faced at war.

Origins
Upon the inception of the Harvard Fatigue Laboratory, physiology at Harvard University was organised into four departments: applied physiology, comparative physiology, physical chemistry and physiology. In the USA, exercise physiology wasn’t understood as an academic discipline until around the end of the Second World War. The laboratory therefore didn’t belong to any department - investigating a broad range of physiological experiences that humans encounter in “everyday life”. Additionally, the prominent figures who contributed to its founding had academic backgrounds that were somewhat independent of what we now know as contemporary exercise physiology: Wallace Brett Donham (1877-1954), dean of Harvard's Business School; George Elton Mayo (1880-1949), psychologist and social theorist ; and Lawrence J. Henderson (1878-1942), professor of biological chemistry at Harvard College.

Before its opening, L.J. Henderson was doing some research on the physiology of daily work, which Mayo was interested in academically. Mayo was discouraged by his current academic path, and wrote to Donham that there wasn’t a “competent investigation of the physiological changes induced in the human organism by the conditions of. . . daily work” at his current organisation. Donham’s interest in the human side of business operations led him to encourage Mayo to initiate the laboratory for study of the sociological and psychological impacts in the work place. Henderson and Mayo were pushed together by similar ideals on the nature of exercise physiology itself, as their approach was holistic rather than systems- or organ-oriented. Henderson also involved Arlie Bock, the clinical investigator at the Massachusetts General Hospital, and David Bruce Dill, who was a research fellow working with Bock at the time. Each individual added to the interdisciplinary culture of the laboratory, examining the broad nature of 'fatigue'.

Research
In the beginnings of the twentieth century, industrial workload and fatigue drew the attention of Western science to maximise the productivity of workers for economic prosperity. The laboratory was therefore named a ‘Fatigue laboratory’ in order to appeal to business leaders, engineers and the general public, whilst not constraining it to any departmental or narrow research activities due to the broad nature of the term 'fatigue'. In its 20 years of operation, 16 publications pertaining to fatigue were produced, whereas most others included hematology, comparative physiology, altitude physiology and temperature physiology.

Of the 300 peer-reviewed research studies originating from the laboratory, topics ranged from the general; work capacity and fatigue, to the more specific; cardiovascular and haemodynamic responses to exercise. This was a direct result of Henderson and Mayo’s holistic approach to physiology as opposed to a systems- or organ-oriented approach, which was novel in their time.

The Fatigue Laboratory was celebrated for its culture surrounding self-experimentation - the researchers would includes themselves as a subject and partake in the experiment. A prime example of this is Dill and his colleague, John Talbott, went to the Hoover Dam not long after its construction to investigate the working conditions of the employees. Workers at the dam were subject to extreme heat that led to exhaustion and death. Dill and Talbott went to the Hoover Dam with healthy work crew volunteers and ran physiological and biochemical studies on themselves and the subjects to investigate. As a result, Dill and Talbott concluded that cooler conditions to sleep and a salt-heavy diet would mitigate impacts of heat and exhaustion.

Second World War
During the Second World War, Harvard Fatigue Laboratory was used as one of the research facilities to examine conditions face by soldiers. Diets of soldiers were copied and analysed under similar environmental conditions, and new emergency rations to be sent to soldiers were tested for efficacy. The laboratory also contained extreme temperature rooms to investigate the physiological effects of different climates on soldier performance. A primary purpose of this was to understand the energy metabolism and heat flow from human subjects due to clothing - to optimise weight carried and energy output.

Another use of the laboratory was to study the physiological impacts of suddenly breathing air with low levels of oxygen, as pilots sometimes did.

The Fatigue Laboratory and its staff were not limited to studies involving human subjects. An investigation into the use of bats as vectors of incendiary devices was studied by a researcher of the Harvard Fatigue Laboratory, as intel discovered that Japanese civilians would use straw in the roofs of their houses.

Contributions to Exercise Physiology
The Harvard Fatigue Laboratory is one of the many institutions responsible for the organisation of exercise physiology as a legitimate academic discipline. 20% of the Academic material produced by the laboratory was specifically related to exercise physiology, and another 41% was associated with exercise in some way.

The formation of an academic discipline is outlined by Tipton (1998), and includes the argument that formal courses and PhD research must be undertaken in the field in order for the discipline to separate itself from others. Due to the structure of the Harvard fatigue laboratory, PhD students weren't able to complete research there, so this was described as an impediment to the progression of exercise physiology as a discipline. As no formal courses in exercise physiology were offered to undergraduates from the laboratory, the formation of the academic discipline was left to other institutions. However, the legacy of the Harvard Fatigue Laboratory as a facility that published an enormous amount of literature surrounding the topics of exercise and exercise physiology is one of the compounding factors that started the discipline. When the laboratory was closed in 1947, the researchers who gained experience under Henderson and Dill were employed in other institutions more equipped to propel exercise physiology as a discipline. The laboratory is noted as stimulating the birth of exercise physiology as a result of the staff forming and leading exercise laboratory’s all over the nation.

Closure
In 1947, by the decree of the President of Harvard University, James B. Conant closed the Harvard Fatigue Laboratory. Conant wrote to the Dean of the Business school stating that either he finance the Fatigue Laboratory himself, or close it - sources at the time believed that Conant did not think it could have any functional use after the War, so didn’t support it. Their model to understand ‘Fatigue’ as an industrial solution to productivity was not thoroughly understood, and it looked as though fatigue was more complex than originally thought. On top of this, the mechanisation of industrial work alleviated the stress and fatigue workers faced during the period. Conant saw this as a reason to disband the scientific progression of the laboratory.

A multitude of compounding factors also played into the closing of the laboratory. The death of L.J. Henderson in 1942 saw Dill take the role of the director, the post-war Harvard University policy that the facility should not seek government funds, the dispersion of staff to other laboratories and sites because of WWII, the belief of Conant that the laboratory should reduce its sociological activities and the lack of harmony between the Medical School dean and the dean that replaced Donham.