Freezing & Stifling

Last week the methodical English physiologist who developed the efficient gas masks used by the British during the War appeared at Yale University to describe how he felt when he 1) almost froze himself to death; 2) almost suffocated himself.

Born 64 years ago in Ireland, Sir Joseph Barcroft has been Cambridge University's professor of physiology for ten years.

Making himself the subject of deathly experiment is his specialty. To show that men have more stamina than dogs, he remained in a chamber filled with hydrocyanic acid gas until a dog died, then walked out with the creature in his arms.

Scientific societies of eight countries have honored him. Last year the late King George V knighted this Quaker whose conscientious scruples kept him from active fighting in the War.

The courage and curiosity of Sir Joseph led him to undress in an ice-cold room.

Lying down, stark naked, he rested until an assistant saw that unconsciousness was only a few moments away, rushed in with warm blankets, warm drinks. Last week at Yale Sir Joseph recounted his observations thus : "Nature dictates, as you all know, that the body temperature should remain approximately constant at 98.6DEG Fahrenheit.

What happens, then, if we deliberately try to force our temperature away from that mark? In one way or other we can do so.

Sufficient exposure to cold will lower the temperature and sufficient exposure to heat will raise it. Let us consider cold first.

"What comes back when I recall the attempt to reduce my body temperature? Certain effects on the heart were interesting but in no way arresting, but what comes back is the effect on my mind. In each of the two experiments which I performed there was a moment when my whole mental outlook altered. As I lay naked in the cold room I had been shivering and my limbs had been flexed in a sort of effort to huddle up, and I had been very conscious of the cold. Then a moment came when I stretched out my legs; the sense of coldness passed away, and it was succeeded by a beautiful feeling of warmth; the word 'bask' most fitly describes my condition: I was basking in the cold. What had taken place, I suppose, was that my central nervous system had given up the fight, that the vasoconstriction had passed from my skin, and that the blood returning thither gave that sensation of warmth which one experiences when one goes out of a cold-storage room into the ordinary air. . . .

"Up to the point at which shivering ceased, nature fought the situation; my instinct was to be up and about, an effort of will was necessary to remain the subject of the experiment; after that point I gladly acquiesced, initiative had gone.

Doubtless a second and more advanced stage would follow in which inertia would lapse into unconsciousness. For I suppose that, had the experiment not ended at that point, my temperature would have fallen rapidly and I was on the verge of the condition of travelers when they go to sleep in extreme cold never again to awake.

"And I was conscious of other reversions of mental state: not only was there a physical extension of the limbs, but with it came a change in the general mental attitude. The natural apprehension lest some person alien to the experiment should enter the room and find me quite unclad disappeared--just as flexion was changed to extension, so the natural modesty was changed to--well, I don't know what. Clearly one should be very cautious about taking these liberties with one's mind, and that is the point; the higher parts of the central nervous system were the first things to suffer." In similar vein at Yale last week Sir Joseph recalled how he had sat in a room suffused almost to the killing point with carbon dioxide gas. Of this odorless gas which appears, among other places, in the exhaled breath of all animals, Sir Joseph declared: "The highest percentage which I know to have been breathed experimentally was 11%, and that for a short time by Mr. John Burdon Sanderson Haldane. Dr. Rodolfo Margaria and I have been in an atmosphere of 10% carbon dioxide for, perhaps, five minutes, but I think that somewhere around 7% or 8% is as much as can be withstood for any extended period, and with that I think Mr. Haldane would agree. Margaria and I spent about 20 minutes in 7.2% carbon dioxide and were quite ready to come out of it at the end.

"Our symptoms were rather different, but in both cases they were connected with the highest parts of the central nervous system. Margaria suffered from headache for the rest of the day, and Haldane was affected in the same way; my own symptoms were no less definite, but were those of mental fatigue. The mental symptom lasted about two days.

"I took certain samples of my own breath in the chamber at intervals, a process which required some nicety of manipulation, the correct turning of taps and so forth. The analyses proved that there had been errors of manipulation in the last two samples. Now the interesting point is not that these errors occurred, though that is quite significant, but that I could have gone into a court of law and sworn that one at least of the two was correctly taken. On the occasion on which we had been in 10% carbon dioxide, when I came out I was retaining my grip of things only with an effort.

"Margaria and I agreed on two things, firstly, that we did not want to repeat this experiment unless there was some good reason for doing so, and secondly, that our reluctance was due to our unwillingness to expose the higher parts of our brain to the influence of so much carbonic acid."

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