CARBON-MONOXIDE VICTIMS

Evening Star, Issue 20029, 21 November 1928, Page 8

CARBON-MONOXIDE VICTIMS

ROW TO REVIVE THEM Deaths in clo.-f’ii yiiraficK ami suintles by the gas route will in future become less numerous it a resuscitation method now being tried out by Dr Ludwig Schmidt-Kehl, »t llio University of Wucrtzburg, Germany, works as well mi human beings as it has on eats in the laboratory. Science Service's ‘Daily Science News Dullctin’ (Viashington) reports; ■

“ Cats so far gone with carbon-monoxide ' asphyxiation that they would surely have died iiavo been ‘brought to by jilacing them in a closed ehambor of pure oxygon uiulcr pressure, which was alternately dccreased and increased in time with their own natural breathing rate. Carbonmonoxide poisoning, hr fechmidt-Kchl explains, is due to the abnormal appetite ot thu red blood corpuscles for the unwholesome gas. They take it up times as readily as they do oxygen, which is the buiden they normally carry to the body cells. The latter, deprived of their ration of oxygen, die of internal suffocation. With the red corpuscles out of commission, the situation might seem to bo hopeless. But f lie German physiologist points out that the blood fluid itself, which ordinarily carries so lilllo oxygen that it cuts no practical figure at all in respiration, may bo induced to load up with an emergency ration by placing the asphyxiated animal or person in a closed chamber of oxygen under pressure. TC the pressure is kept at a, uniform level, it, must, bo relatively high; but DrSchmidtKeiil lias found that much lower pressures can be used if these aro alternately increased and lowered, in time with _ the breathing rate of the victim. This simulated breathing in a closed chamber, he has found, is much more likely to revive semi-asphyxiated animals than a uniform high pressure. Thus far the work has been done only with a small experimental apparatus, with a chamber only large enough to contain a rat. Considerable difficulties have still to bo overcome before the method can be adapted to clinical use for saving asphyxiated human beings.”