A PORTRAIT

Grey River Argus, 30 August 1939, Page 10

A PORTRAIT

Of a Practical Man (By Prof. J. B. S. Haldane, F.R.S.). Almost everyone in Britain was horrified at the story of how the men in the Thetis slowly died of suffocation; a few feet from safety. Many admired the courage of the four International Brigaders who, though they did not die at least know how the dying men in the Thetis felt. But I believe that in tens of thousands of homes men were saying, and saying quite rightly, “This is what we may have to put up with any day, and if we suffocate there won’t be all this i song and dance about it.’ I j The men who, I except, said this; ; were miners. A miner may be crushed by a fall of roof, or if the roof falls between him and safety he may | be suffocated or die of thirst. In an, explosion he may be overcome by gas, or burnt so that his skin comes off like a glove. Finally, if there is an accident, it is taken for granted that a miner will risk his life for his comrades. A miner who did not do so would be a freak like a five-legged calf or a tortoise-shell tom cat. There is the same high standard of courage among mining engineers and inspec- ’ tors. As a result of the Thetis disaster some additional safety devices are to ( ue introduced for submarines. If the public were not so accustomed to colliery explosions, the same would have taken place long ago in coal mines. In the rest of this article I am going I' to tell the story of my late father,' 1 J. S. Haldane, and of the measures ' which he recommended for coal-min- ' ers 43 years ago. ' My father’s first scientific work consisted of analyses of air in the 1 slums of Dundee in 1885 and 1886. 1 “The one-roomed houses,” he wrote, < “were mostly those of the very poor. 1 Sometimes as many as six, or even 1 eight, persons occupied the one bed. 1 In other cases there was no bed at 1 all.” The average space per per- 1 son in these one-roomed houses was 212 cubic feet, the same as the volume t of the chamber in which I was making 1 experiments in connection with the 1 Thetis disaster. The smallest space 1 was just under half this, or much less ' than the space per man in the Thetis,i even with twice her normal crew, and * two compartments flooded. i 1 in 1892 he determined to investigate i the causes of the high death-rate in < over-crowded dwellings. He shut him- • i self up in an airtight chamber until 1 he felt ill, while the air in the cham- 1 ber was analysed from time to time. I When he came out he vomited. The < experiments which I described in the i Thetis case were merely extensions of : this on. He was able to stay much i longer, with no bad effects, when a i mixture of soda and lime was spread ’ out on a tray to absorb the carbon i dioxide produced by his breathing. | i These experiments convinced my 1 father that the high death-rate in, <

over-crowded houses was not due to chemical causes, but to bacteria. For most iioors and walls, especially in slums, are so leaky that the carbon dioxioe content never gets very high, or the oxygen very low. He was not; a bacteriologist, so he looked fori places where men were being killed? not by bacteria, but by’ chemical im-l purities in the air. He soon found them. In 1894 he went down Podmore Colliery in Staf-i fordshire and Lilieshali in Shropshire, analysing samples of the gas which accumulated in the old workings, and als 0 breathing them until they made him feel silly. This gas, however. Is not so poisonous as the “afterdamp” found after an explosion, and containing carbon monoxide. In the same year he tried the ef-1 fects of carbon monoxide first on i mice, and then on himself. These exI periments were rather embarrasingj I since mild carbon monoxide poison-1 I ing is very like mild alcohol poisonI ing. One talks too much, and one’s I legs give way if one comes out into cold air. So when my mother was' seen steering my father home from the laboratory, some neighbours' thought he was drunk. i In 1896 there were explosions at] Tylorstown, Brancepeth and Micklefl collieries. My father went to the' scene of each as soon as possible, examined the bodies of the men and horses, and in one case helped in the rescue of still living men. He concluded that the main cause of death was carbon monoxide poisoning, though a few had been badly burned, or killed by the force of the blast. In a blue-book published in 1896 he recommended the use of mice as indicators of carbon monoxide. Later he found that small birds were effect-' ed. But he went further. “In such cases, ’ he wrote, “escape would still be possible were the men provided at' their working places with apparatus mantaining life in irrespirable atmospheres, and were electric lamps available for lighting parties of men on their way out.” He then went on to describe the apparatus needed, which was something like the modern rescue apparatus or the Davis apparatus used in submarines. This report was made 43 years ago, and although escape apparatus is provided for men in submarines, this has | not been done for coal-miners; if it had been provided, several thousands of lives would have been saved. My father continued his work on several different lines. Starting from that fact that carbon dioxide causes much more panting than want of oxygen, he showed that the breathing is generally so regulated as to keep, the amount of carbon dioxide in the; blood very steady, and that it is as > bad to have too little carbon dioxide as too much. He also showed how to make diving, much safer, and did a, good deal to improve ventilation in mines, ships, and factories. In his latter years he was occupied with the question of i silicosis. He always said that the most interesting physiological prob-, lems were those which arose in or-i dinary life, and did his best to link \

up physiology to industrial hygiene as well as ordinary medicine . From the age of ten onwards, 1 used to go down mines with my lather frequently. Besides this he exi perimented on me in the laboratory. ■ So it was quite natural that I should rcarry on his work, and in particular l study changes in the blood which took I place when I breathed air containing a Jot of carbon dioxide. i Such experiments are not dangerous if one knows one’s job, nor alarming if one has been brought up to it. In fact the experiments which I made in connection with the Thetis disaster were only the continuation of the work which my father began 50 years ago in the slums of Dundee: