Balloon Ascensions 177 



Society; a report " was made from which we extract the following 

 passage: 



We have known for a long time that an animal cannot pass with 

 impunity from an atmosphere to which he is accustomed to one much 

 denser or much rarer. In the first case, he suffers from the weight of 

 the outer air, which has an excessive pressure; in the second case, the 

 liquids or elastic fluids which are part of his system, since they are 

 undergoing less than the usual pressure, expand and stretch the 

 surrounding tissues. In both cases, the effects are almost the same, 

 uneasiness, general discomfort, buzzing in the ears, and often hemor- 

 rhages; the experiment of the diver's bell long ago indicated to us 

 what would happen to aeronauts. Our colleague and his travelling 

 companion experienced these effects with great intensity; their lips 

 were swollen, their eyes bloodshot; the rounded veins stood out in 

 relief on their hands, and — a very astonishing fact — they both dis- 

 played a reddish brown complexion which surprised those who had 

 seen them before their ascent. 



This distension of the blood vessels, in their farthest ramifications, 

 must necessarily produce a hindrance, a constraint in all the muscular 

 movements; and it is mainly to this cause that I think we should 

 attribute the vain efforts made by our colleague to swallow the bread 

 which his companion gave him when they were still at a height 

 marked by 12 inches on the barometer. (Mem., Vol. I, page 106.) 



An aeronaut who was celebrated for being the first to descend 

 from a balloon in a parachute (October 29, 1797), Jacques Garn- 

 erin, tried to take from his rival Robertson the honor of the highest 

 ascent. As the following extract from the Journal de Paris 1J 

 proves, he claimed to have risen to 4200 fathoms (8186 meters). 



In the interest of the sciences and the arts, which barbarians have 

 mutilated, M. Garnerin writes from St. Petersburg to Paris the account 

 • of the aerial journey which he undertook at Moscow the third of last 

 October, in which he rose exactly to the height of 4200 fathoms, 

 without having experienced any symptom other than hemorrhage of 

 the nose, and a little discomfort from the cold. Happy opportunity 

 to entertain the public with his quarrels with M. Robertson, whom he 

 calls "the aeronaut of Hamburg", and whose powers of observation 

 and whose truth he questions! "I rose," says M. Garnerin, "521 fathoms 

 higher than the aeronaut of Hamburg, and I did not notice that 

 matter lost weight, nor did I see the sun without brilliancy, nor the 

 sky without azure. I felt neither an extraordinary apathy, nor diffi- 

 culty in swallowing, nor a desire to sleep, etc " 



Nothing seems less authentic than the statement of Garnerin; 

 the data which we shall presently report show that at the height 

 which he says he reached he would have experienced very serious 

 physiological disturbances. 



