308 Historical 



M. Colin: I am surprised that M. Blot sees the slightest contra- 

 diction in my words. I said that the symptoms and death in ascen- 

 sions are due to several causes, among others the compression of the 

 diaphragm by the gases of the digestive tract and the decrease of 

 pressure on the tissues and the vessels resulting in pulmonary, nasal, 

 and other hemorrhages. Each of these causes has a part in the effect; 

 far from excluding each other, they are linked together. 



M. Mialhe: I agree with M. Woillez that the decrease of the 

 atmospheric pressure was the principal cause of death, but I cannot 

 accept the idea of M. Colin that one should not eat before making 

 a balloon ascension. Man is not a ruminant, and things do not go on 

 within him just as they do in the herbivores. 



M. Colin: What! Does man then have privileges in regard to diges- 

 tion? Does the stomach function otherwise in the abdomen of man 

 than in the abdomen of an animal? The dog which has eaten meat 

 and bread has in his stomach much gas which one can measure by 

 ligating the aesophagus and the pylorus. Why would not these same 

 foods also produce gases in the stomach of man? Have not the diges- 

 tive process and the fermentations uniform characteristics in species so 

 closely related? 



I shall express myself later upon this question of the intestinal 

 gases; but now, seeing" the importance which M. Colin seems to 

 attribute to it, I cannot refrain from one remark: the desire of 

 contradicting must be a very strong passion in some persons, since 

 it has led a physiologist of this rank to say such strange things. 



The last document which I shall submit to my readers is 

 perhaps still stranger. If there are some among them, as I fear, 

 who think that, in giving the history of mountain sickness, I have 

 displayed an excessive wealth of quotations and descriptions, they 

 will, no doubt, pardon me for this imposition when they consider 

 that in 1875, before the Geographical Society, before the Academy 

 of Sciences itself, the very existence of mountain sickness was 

 denied, a denial which depends upon the strangest of methods, or 

 rather which is the very absence of scientific method, because it 

 takes into account only the circumstances in which the travellers 

 felt no symptoms during their ascents. 



The first communication from M. Virlet d'Aoust on this subject 

 is dated May 19, 1875. The official Proceedings 148 of the Geograph- 

 ical Society narrates it in the following words: 



M. Virlet d'Aoust, on the occasion of the recent disaster of the 

 Zenith, made a communication about the effects of the rarefaction of 

 the air in the region of lofty mountains. In an ascent of Popocatepetl, 

 at an altitude of 4500 meters, he felt no other discomfort than a fatigue 

 more pronounced than on the plains. There are numerous examples 

 in the Andes of inhabited places at an altitude of 2000 and 3000 meters. 

 Mexico City is at an elevation of 2300 meters. 



