[Fifty years of ergospirometry (author's transl)].

With the development of ergospirometry, Knipping and Brauer introduced the diagnosis of performance in 1929. Ergospirometric methods have a certain importance today in research, diagnosis, therapy, rehabilitation, training and sport. Medical special disciplines such as sports medicine, pulmonology, cardiology, occupational medicine, social medicine and physiology of performance and also the fields of biomechanics, clinical pharmacology and biochemistry make use of ergospirometry and owe much new knowledge to it.