WORK UNDER PRESSURE AND IN 



GREAT HEAT 1 



By J. S. HALDANE, M.D., F.R.S. 



Fellow of New College and Reader in Physiology, University of Oxford 



The development in all directions of engineering and manu- 

 facturing work is constantly bringing man into new and un- 

 accustomed relations with his environment. In consequence of 

 this, his working efficiency may be reduced very greatly, and his 

 health, or life itself, may be endangered. The question of how 

 to carry on work safely and efficiently under an unwonted 

 environment is thus one which occurs in many forms to those 

 who are engaged in our branch of science. In the present 

 address I wish to glance shortly at several problems of industrial 

 hygiene, presented by work beneath water or beneath the 

 ground, and at some recent attempts at their investigation and 

 practical solution. 



I shall refer first to work in deep water under the sea. In 

 consequence of the difficulties and dangers connected with the 

 work of divers on the sea-bottom, the British Admiralty two 

 years ago appointed a Committee to investigate the subject, 

 with myself as the physiological member. The experiments 

 carried out by this Committee, and at the Lister Institute, 

 London, in close connection with it, are now completed ; and I 

 propose to give some account of the results, which, like many 

 other British investigations on questions of hygiene, are hidden 

 under the somewhat forbidding form of an official blue-book. 2 



Let me remind you that the ordinary diving dress consists of 

 a copper helmet screwed to a corselet, the latter being in its turn 

 connected water-tight to a stout waterproof dress covering every 

 part of the body except the hands, which project through elastic 

 cuffs. Air is supplied through a non-return valve on the helmet 

 from a flexible pipe connected with an air-pump on a boat or 



1 An address delivered at the General Meeting of the International Congress 

 of Hygiene, Berlin, September 26th, 1907. 



' Report to the Admiralty on the Conditions of Deep Diving, 1907. 



378 



