extracts in support of the foregoing statements. Those who desire to pursue the matter in detail may usefully turn to the very comprehensive summary in La Pression Barométrique, by M. Paul Bert,[1] where 156 pages are devoted to experiences in high places, 25 more to aeronauts, and 120 more to theories. Evidence of a nature similar to that which is quoted by M. Bert continues to accumulate, and is often, apparently, of a contradictory character. For example, since returning from the journey which is described in the following pages, three writers upon Mexico[2] have mentioned that breathing is affected in that city by the ‘rarefied atmosphere,’ although the altitude in question is less than 8000 feet above the sea; while on the other hand, quite recently (in speaking of the Southern Andes up to heights 13,800 feet above the sea), Dr. A. Plagemann says, “with regard to the effects of rarefied air on the body at high elevations, neither he nor his companions suffered at all.”[3] Still more divergent is the statement by Mr. W. W. Graham that he reached nearly the height of 24,000 feet in the Himalayas, and that “neither in this nor in any other ascent did he feel any inconvenience in breathing other than the ordinary panting inseparable from any great muscular exertion.”[4]
This unique experience has met with little credence in India.
- ↑ G. Masson, Paris, 1878. This work has received the highest honours in France. The experiments made by M. Bert upon himself at low pressures, although extremely interesting, left off sooner than could have been desired. In the first of the two experiments which I quote in the Appendix to this volume, he submitted himself to an artificial diminution of pressure somewhat greater than that which is experienced at the summit of Chimborazo, and in the second one to about the pressure which would be enjoyed on the top of Mount Everest. But this was done for only a brief space of time. The first experiment extended over only sixty-six minutes and the second one over eighty-nine minutes; and, as soon as any ill effects commenced to manifest themselves, M. Bert refreshed himself with oxygen. The experiments seemed to shew that oxygen may exercise a beneficial influence.
- ↑ See A Trip lo Mexico, by H. C. R. Becher, Toronto, 1880, p. 73; Mexico To-Day, by T. U. Brocklehurst, London, 1883, p. 28; and Winter in the Slant of the Sun, in Good Words, 1887, p. 245, by the Bishop of Rochester.
- ↑ Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society, April 1887, p. 219.
- ↑ Proc. Royal Geog. Soc., August 1884, p. 434.
