The Harvard Fatigue Laboratory

The Harvard Fatigue Laboratory opened its doors for the first time in the fall of 1927 as a laboratory of human physiology in the Harvard Graduate School of Business. According to the Mandeville Special Collections Library, The founding committee of the Harvard Fatigue Laboratory consisted of Lawrence J. Henderson; Wallace Donham, dean of the Business School; William Morton Wheeler, professor of entomology at Harvard College; David T. Edsall, dean of the Medical School; Elton Mayo, professor of industrial research in the Business School; and Arlie Bock, of the Medical School and the Massachusetts General Hospital.

The purpose of the Fatigue Laboratory was to study how the body reacted to certain situations, and how the body fatigued in relationship to those certain situations. Some of the topics researched at the Laboratory according to the Mandeville Special Collections Library, were the physical chemistry of blood, exercise physiology, nutritional interactions, aging, and the stresses of high altitude and climate. The Laboratory was equipped with plenty of treadmills, a climatic room, altitude chamber, and animal room. The Laboratory conducted high-altitude studies and also performed a desert study. With these unique studies being performed, it attracted numerous people from different regions of the world, and physiologists from here in the United States.

In a recent biographical sketch (Smith, 2004) credit was given to Lawrence J. Henderson as the person responsible for the idea of opening the Fatigue Laboratory on the campus of Harvard University. The idea came in 1926, with the doors opening soon after in 1927. Lawrence Henderson was a very skilled man doing lots of work as a biologist, chemist, physiologist, sociologist and philosopher. Henderson spent lots of time researching the body, and the benefits of fitness on the body. It was the desire of researching the human body and fitness that drove Henderson into proposing the idea of establishing the Harvard Fatigue Laboratory. Henderson spent almost all of his professional life associated with Harvard University. Lawrence Henderson died in 1942, but his contributions to the Harvard Fatigue Laboratory and the fitness world will never be forgotten.

Another very important figure in the funding of the Harvard Fatigue Laboratory was David Bruce Dill. According to the American Physiological Society, in 1927, Dill became one of the main faculty personnel of the Laboratory, and he was associated with the Laboratory until 1947. Throughout his career, Dill made contributions in the fields of exercise and environmental physiology. During his years at the Harvard Fatigue Laboratory, he led expeditions to high-altitude, tropical, and desert environments to study the effects of environmental extremes under natural & laboratory conditions. Dill's studies on the high-altitude, tropical and desert environments were the first of its kind, with the high-altitude study conducted in 1929 and the desert study in 1932. Dill left the Laboratory in 1947 due to it's closure, and then took a position as scientific director of the Medical Division of the Army Chemical Center in Edgewood, Maryland. After he retired from his Scientific Director position in 1961 he was a Research Scholar at the University of Indiana and the University of Nevada. Dill continued his studies until his death in 1986. Just like Lawrence J. Henderson, his contributions will always be treasured and never forgotten.

According to the Mandeville Special Collections Library, during the War, the Fatigue Laboratory continued it's research which was funded by the Government, although many of the Laboratory's staff members worked in wartime research programs, and took military commissions. Lawrence Henderson died in 1942, and many of the original committee members of the Laboratory had retired. This was the start of the uphill battle for the Harvard Fatigue Laboratory to try to keep its doors open. After the war, there were many factors that correlated with the closure of the Laboratory, with the biggest one being the discontinuation of funding from Harvard University. In 1946, the Harvard Fatigue Laboratory was forced to close its doors for the very last time, and its assets were given to the School of Public Health.

Because of the Harvard Fatigue Laboratory, many things were learned early on about fitness, and how beneficial it is to one's health. The studies conducted at the Laboratory were vital in determining what specific conditions would put the body under the most stress during physical activity. These studies paved the way for more of its kind today. The two people who contributed the most to the Fatigue Laboratory were Lawrence J. Henderson and David Bruce Dill. Without the passion for studying the human body and the effect fitness had on the body from these two scientists, the fitness world might not have had the vast amount of knowledge that it has today.