Tributes 



better by others, but I must refer to the book of his which I consider 

 his most important contribution to physiology, The Architecture of 

 Physiological Function. The title is very characteristic of Barcroft, but 

 perhaps not the best title to get people to read the book. I would 

 suggest that it is a book which gives an integration of physiology of 

 such a kind that it ought to be read by everybody who is going into 

 experimental work in physiology. It gives the general ideas which 

 cannot be obtained from any other book in existence. 



Professor C. G. Douglas 



Professor Roughton has asked me to say something of my recollec- 

 tions of Barcroft between 1910 and the end of the First World War. 

 I had, of course, known Barcroft before that date, for his brilliant 

 elucidation of the problem of oxyhaemoglobin and its dissociation had 

 a direct and fundamental bearing on the physiology of respiration with 

 which Oxford had been so deeply concerned since the early years of 

 this century. But it was not until 1910 that I became closely acquainted 

 with him, for it was to his good offices that I owed an invitation to 

 accompany him on an expedition to the Peak of TenerifTe, under the 

 auspices of the International Tuberculosis Conference, to study the 

 effects on man of exposure to high altitudes. This expedition, under 

 the leadership of Professor Pannwitz of Berlin, included Zuntz and 

 Neuberg (Berlin), Durig and von Schrbtter (Vienna), and Mascart 

 (Lyons), the French astronomer who was to observe Haliey's comet. 



Barcroft had already done his fundamental work on oxyhaemoglobin 

 dissociation, and he now had the opportunity of testing whether the 

 dissociation curve was modified in any way so as to assist in the 

 adaptation of the respiration to the effects of high altitude and the 

 resultant diminution of oxygen pressure in the atmosphere. He had 

 already with great ingenuity modified his original differential blood- 

 gas apparatus so that he could obtain accurate results using only one 

 tenth of a cubic centimetre of blood, and when the time came the 

 whole of his apparatus was very compact and of small bulk so that he 

 could face transport difficulties with equanimity. 



As a preliminary I visited Cambridge. As we left King's College 

 after lunch I said to Barcroft : ' Now, I suppose, we go to the labora- 

 tory.' ' No ', replied Barcroft, ' we visit the surgeon.' ' Why ? ' said I, 



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