Summary and Discussion 3d:. 



their prevalence; no one seemed even to have supposed that they 

 could act at moderate altitudes, where no violent symptom attracts 

 the attention of the traveller or the physician; no one had fol- 

 lowed their consequences and shown their dangerous effect under 

 pathological conditions; and finally, no one had tried to discover 

 what part they play in the hygiene of peoples inhabiting lofty 

 places, what effect they produce upon their character, their cus- 

 toms, and their destiny. 



If it is true to say that the discovery belongs, not to the one who 

 has found the truth, as if by chance, and who has carelessly ex- 

 pressed it, but to him who, perceiving it in his turn, has felt its 

 whole importance, has collected proofs to support it, has defended 

 it against bitter attacks, even when they came from eminent au- 

 thorities; who, in a word, has made a theory out of an isolated idea, 

 it is to M. Jourdanet and not to de Saussure, Martins, Brachet, or 

 Pravaz that we shall give the credit for having found the true ex- 

 planation of the symptoms of decompression, as he already has 

 the credit for having so clearly denned and described them by 

 the name of anoxemia. 



However, we must note here again that the basis of the theory 

 rested only on reasoning and deductions, very well connected, to 

 be sure, but not sufficient to establish complete proof to minds ac- 

 customed to the precision of scientific methods. It was necessary 

 to make experimental proof of anoxemia and of its effect upon the 

 production of the symptoms which appear in rarefied air. I had 

 already said in 1869: "I cannot repeat too often that these are 

 reasonings, likelihoods, probabilities at most. When shall we have 

 the experimentation which will bring conviction? Who will do 

 for the study of respiration, under decreased or increased pres- 

 sure, what the King of Bavaria did when he furnished Pettenkofer 

 with all the apparatus necessary for the study of the products of 

 normal respiration?" G 



This appeal was heard. M. Jourdanet himself permitted me 

 to subject to experimental test both his own theory and all those 

 which deserved to be examined thus. The account of the experi- 

 ments which I made with the help of the apparatuses which I had 

 secured, thanks to him, will form the second part of this work. 



And now in completing this review of the opinions suggested 

 to explain mountain sickness, I have only to remind the reader in 

 summary that many of them could not withstand the critical ex- 

 amination to which we subjected them; that others, whose ac- 

 curacy is not very likely, are awaiting, for final judgment, experi- 



