KEEPING FIT.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 59, 10 March 1936, Page 14

KEEPING FIT.

MT. EVEREST CLIMBERS PROBLEMS FOR DOCTORS. BIGHT-HOUR OXYGEN SUPPLY. (By Air Mail.—Special Correspondent.) LONDON, February 15. Mr. Erie Shipton and Mr. F. S. Smythe, two more members of Mr. Hugh Riittledgc's Mount Everest expedition, will 1 leave London for India within the next few days. They will join otheis who have already left to uiake final preparations for this year's attempt on the '29,002 ft peak. .In their attack on the summit the climbers will have the assistance a newly designed oxygen apparatus. The advantage of this will be that the user will breathe pure oxygen instead of a mixture of oxygen and air, as he did with the pattern taken on the prcviotis Ruttledge expedition. It will also be possible to inhale from and exhale into the bag attached to the face mask. Consequently, no oxygen is lost by being breathed out into the air. .This material development has been achieved by inserting a soda lime container between the mask and the bag. The poda lime absorbs the carbon dioxide exhaled without disturbing the oxygen that remains in the bag, which is fed from a cylinder carried on the back. It is calculated that the cylinder will supply oxygen for four hours. The apparatus was described by Dr. Noel Humphreys and Dr. C. B. Warren who both have considerable mountaineering experience, and will be members of Mr. Ruttledge's party. "With its aid a man will be able to breathe as normally on the higher slopes of Everest as if he were 011 sea levcL" it woe explained. It will be tlie special duty of Dr. Humphreys and Dr. Warren to look after the health of the party. The medical problems they will have to deal with, according to Dr. Warren, will be: Protection against illness on the march t6 the mountain; special conditions commonly met with at high altitudes, and questions of acclimatisation and deterioration. "It is of the utmost importance to get the climbing party to the base of operations in as perfect a state of bodily health as possible," he said. Precautions have to be taken against malaria, smallpox, enteric and Jyeentry during the early unhealthy marches through Sikkiin. Every member of the party, has had his jaws Xrayed for signs of incipient abscess, or latent infection of which the sufferer night himself be unaware. Experience las shown that when the vitality is owered by exertions in the higher rariied atmosphere, unsuspected dangers ire apt to develop quickly.