Paul Dudley White's Exercise Tests
While attached to Base Hospital No. 6 in the summer of 1918, Paul Dudley White examined and analyzed convalescent gassed soldiers to determine their fitness for return to duty. He devised a number of respiratory and exercise tests for the soldiers, including a 100-meter run wearing a gas mask: "The run provided the exertion and the gas mask the mental spur. Bad general appearance, breathlessness, pain, faintness, cough, extreme tachycardia and exhaustion were the conditions looked for at the finish of the run and helped decide on the fitness of the individual. This test was used on about 2000 soldiers."
The passage displayed from Paul Dudley White's diary discusses the tests. He published his results as "Observations on Some Tests of Physical Fitness," in the American Journal of the Medical Sciences, in 1920.