276 Historical 



Weber brothers on the tendency of the head of the femur to sepa- 

 rate from the cotyloid cavity in expanded air. The objections of 

 M. Jourdanet do not affect him, as we see. That is because he 

 does not consider the work of this learned physician very impor- 

 tant; in his opinion, Coindet has completely refuted such errone- 

 ous statements: 



What becomes then (he cries) of the alleged insufficiency of 

 oxygenation of the blood at high altitudes? and what shall we say 

 of all the theories which M. Jourdanet has based upon this idea? 



As to the headache, vertigo, and loss of consciousness experi- 

 enced by von Humboldt and other travellers, Dumas explains 

 them "in a wholly mechanical manner"; to tell the truth, he 

 merely copies an explanation already given by Pravaz: 



Barry has shown that at each expiration, the course of the blood 

 is slackened in the jugular veins. Therefore it is easy to understand 

 that, in a person who has reached the summit of a lofty mountain, 

 where his hampered respiration forces his thorax to make hasty 

 movements, his venous blood experiences a stasis in the jugular veins 

 and even flows backward, possibly causing a congestion of the nervous 

 centers and all the symptoms which result from that. 



M. Scoutetten, 111 whose work appeared the next year, is satis- 

 fied with copying the principal parts of the article Altitudes, and 

 particularly the quotation from M. Gavarret, whose opinion he 

 adopts wholly. 



As he seems besides to attach much importance to the varia- 

 tions of the weight sustained by the human body under different 

 barometric pressures, he took the trouble to draw up a long table 

 in which are listed the amounts of this weight in all the mineral 

 water spas. 



We learn from this that a man who sustains 15,345 kilograms 

 at sea level is relieved of 406 kilograms at Vichy, of 1015 at Saint 

 Gervais, of 1905 at Mont Dore, and 2744 at Cauterets, the highest 

 of the spas. 



Is it among such ideas that an author takes his stand whose 

 Proceedings for 1867 publish a note which is not conspicuous for 

 clarity? I do not know and leave the reader the task of decid- 

 ing: 114 



M. Kaufmann submits to the judgment of the Academy a memoir 

 on the mechanical effect of the air upon certain physiological functions 

 in which it does not usually play a part. 



To ascertain, the author says, the mechanical effect exerted upon 

 different parts of the organism by the pressure of the air, I began 

 experiments to measure the air; some in which I measured the 



