26 THE NEW PHYSIOLOGY. 



feet many people who came up fainted from want of 

 oxygen, and we could revive them promptly by ad- 

 ministering pure oxygen. 



It has thus been established that living animal cells, 

 and not merely living and chlorophyll-containing vege- 

 table cells, have the power of liberating or secreting free 

 oxygen. This is an important scientific generalisation, 

 which will certainly be used as a lamp for guiding future 

 investigation, and may also be of practical importance, 

 for instance in medicine. The same may be said of all 

 scientific generalisations ; but it would be absurd to 

 claim that all, or indeed any considerable proportion, 

 of scientific work has immediate practical objects. We 

 certainly did not go to Pike's Peak as medical philan- 

 thropists. I can remember a secret spasm of joy when 

 a newcomer with blue lips and tottering legs challenged 

 one of us to a pugilistic encounter, and I thus recognised 

 the psychological symptoms of want of oxygen, familiar 

 to me already through experience of carbon monoxide 

 poisoning in mines. I fear also that we behaved with 

 arrant hypocrisy to a newspaper representative who 

 came to ask for an interview. We were about to express 

 our great regret that we were too busy, when we noticed 

 that he was particularly blue and rather shaky. We 

 immediately asked him to come in, and proceeded to 

 ply him with " copy," waiting until both his hands 

 and legs gave way. Meanwhile we had some oxygen 

 ready, and with much show of sympathy got him to 

 breathe it when he was just on the point of fainting. 

 To our great satisfaction his lips became red again, 

 and he entirely revived, after which we again continued 

 the interview, and again had the satisfaction of seeing 



