Research in Exercise Physiology and Dyspnea at McMaster University

Dr EJ Moran Campbell arrived in Hamilton, Ontario, in September 1968, as the founding chairman of the Department of Medicine at McMaster University Medical Centre (Hamilton, Ontario). He had asked me to be the Head of the Regional Respiratory Program, and I followed him two weeks later. We had worked together at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School, Hammersmith Hospital, for several years to develop a system of exercise testing that could be routinely applied to any clinical problem associated with effort intolerance. We also each had our own separate obsessions; Moran’s obsession was in dyspnea, and mine was in exercise metabolism. The three research streams – exercise testing, metabolism and dyspnea – gradually gained momentum, largely due to the hard work of graduate students and fellows. In the present brief overview, I hope to acknowledge their contribution as much as the progress we made in these topics.