MEDICINE, WARFARE, AND HISTORY — FULTON 435 



these is oxygen administration. During the First World War, few 

 fighter planes could achieve altitudes greater than 18,000 feet, and the 

 use of oxygen, except in unusual instances, was not deemed a prime 

 military necessity ; hence, such oxygen masks as there were were crude 

 in design and wasteful from the point of view of oxygen supply. The 

 need for oxygen masks was well known, however, from early balloon 

 ascents, and particularly from the tragic Tissandier disaster, which 

 occurred on April 15, 1875. Three men had ascended in a balloon to 

 an altitude of 28,000 feet, and all three were overcome by altitude 

 sickness before they could breathe the oxygen they had on board. As 

 a result, two of the balloonists, Croce-Spinelli and Sivel, succumbed, 

 and Tissandier alone of the three survived. The intrepid French 

 experimenter, Paul Bert, established the fact in a home-made pressure 

 chamber that it was not low pressure as such that had caused the death 

 of the two balloonists but rather the low pressure of oxygen at 28,000 

 feet. Paul Bert exposed himself, along with a bird and a rat, to a 

 pressure of 430 mm. Hg. The bird vomited and appeared quite sick, 

 and at a slightly higher altitude the bird was close to death and the 

 rat uneasy. At that point. Professor Bert became dizzy and his pulse 

 had increased from 60 to 86. He then began to breathe oxygen, his 

 dizziness disappeared, and his pulse within 2 minutes had dropped to 

 64, but it was still impossible for him to whistle. He continued his 

 ascent to an altitude equivalent of 29,000 feet (428 mm. Hg) , at which 

 time the bird was prostrate and a burning candle had turned very blue, 

 with its flame almost extinguished. 



This celebrated experiment made it quite clear that oxygen must 

 be available if planes without pressure cabins were to ascend to alti- 

 tudes above 18,000 feet. Further study carried out during World 

 War II made it clear that vision, mental alertness, and the capacity 

 to fly a plane with safety began to diminish at altitudes as low as 5,000 

 feet, this being particularly true of night vision. Hence, when mili- 

 tary aircraft began to ascend to altitudes of 25,000 and 30,000 feet 

 and later to 40,000 and 50,000 feet ^^ the problem of oxygen supply 

 became acute and all the problems worked out for military aircraft 

 were immediately applicable to commercial planes carrying civilians. 

 It has been said that the Battle of Britain was won with a few oxygen 

 masks. In a literal sense this is perhaps true, because Hitler's mili- 

 tary pilots, both fighters and bombers, began in the summer of 1940 

 to come in at altitude ceilings well above the tolerance of an ordinary 

 flier and they had developed systems of oxygen supply that for a brief 



" In the Illustrated London 'News for May 16, 1953, it is reported that on May 

 4 a new English turbojet bomber (Canberra type) reached an authenticated alti- 

 tude of 63,668 feet, which stands as the altitude record for heavier-thau-air 

 machines under human control. 



