TESTS DESCRIBED BY SCIENTIST

Press, Volume LXXII, Issue 21761, 18 April 1936, Page 6

TESTS DESCRIBED BY SCIENTIST

WHAT IT IS FREEZE ' W “BASKING” IN A COll* ||fo ■ CHAMBERBIRMINGHAM, March! ® | A scientist who has reproduce® ■V; on himself the sensation oi a ]bJi' polar explorer, of an Everest dimbJfe. ~ and of a man approaching death h*|f -i suffocation came here to deliver +wjP J Huxley Lecture at University.» He is Sir Joseph Barcroft, tlS'i Cambridge physiologist, and spoke of the effects of these anf|p‘jj other experiments on the hums®- 1 3 mind. Sir Joseph maintained tbdß& man is only what he is because conditions of his blood are morelfiM exactly constant than those of other living creature, and that most essential effect of any change in environment is a dullih||U i of the higher faculties. mountain sickness and the delusional nervousness, and irritability prrftjfsl duced by changes in conditions wer|| m really disorders of the central vous system. ■ B Sir Joseph’s self-freezing exparii ;B| ment was undertaken in a special ta cold chamber at the Woods Hpl(Sl|* Laboratory in Massachusetts, 1 moment came,” he stated, “when,||p stretched out my leg; the sense coldness passed away; it was sufeMl ceeded by a beautiful feeling oM:| warmth. The word ‘bask’ most described my condition. I wajfi|ra| basking in the cold. What had takei#’jj place, I suppose, was that my c&talM tral nervous ' system had given*' upffiM the fight, and that the blood turned to my skin and sense of warmth which one eixpen||||| ences when one goes out of a col^R ! -s storage room into ordinary air. :'|N| “I suppose that had the. ment not ended at that point temperature would have falle™,!|s rapidly—that I was on the of the condition of travellers whei|P| they go to sleep in extreme ‘ col®|;il never again to wake.” Sif Describing oxygen want, he;told|| ; || how, when riding a test bicycle an atmosphere mostly consisting o||v|f nitrogen, he had found himself men<|y? tally incapable of turning the tap||l| which would bring him oxygen relief. The interesting point this experiment was that he couM||'|s do what was. necessary when structed to do it by someone else.j/^; He told, also, of poor co-ordination as shown in tennis *3 when played at a 12,000 feet albl- ■.[! tude and of the pathetic “last JMBS- .AjC sages” written by a former inspects, of mines when within 20 yards‘"W '■ complete safety had he chosen ' at any time to walk that distance. On another occasion Sir Joseph'f * was a member of a party who were ' suffering from mountain sickness.. All of them were interested, he plained, in the connexion between* mountain sickness and oxygen slipply; all knew there was an abund- !; ance of oxygen cylinders near at' v hand, but no one thought of trying ,- H their effect. ; ■ 1 ■ 3 To4his same dulling of the mind i he attributed the failure of Dr. T. Longstaffe, the Himalayan explorer, to make the necessary on hh . surveying ous occasion when he he had found a. near -BfttjSnji which was higher ithan Everest fitself. '