no CONTEMPORARY SCIENCE 



the breathing, and a cartridge containing alkali to absorb 

 the CO 2 which the subject exhales. Breathing the air in 

 this apparatus through a mouthpiece and rubber tubing 

 the subject consumes the oxygen which it contains, and 

 thus produced for himself the progressively lower and 

 lower tensions of oxygen which are the physiological 

 equivalent of altitude. To control and test the accuracy 

 of the results with the rebreathing apparatus we installed 

 in our laboratory at Mineola a steel chamber, in which 

 six or eight men together can sit comfortably, and from 

 which the air can be exhausted by a power driven pump 

 down to any desired barometric pressure. 



Such apparatus was, however, only the beginning. The 

 practical problem was to determine the functional changes 

 pulse rate, arterial pressure, heart sounds, muscular 

 coordination and psychic condition occurring in the good, 

 the average and the poor candidates for the air service, 

 and then to systematize and introduce these standards on 

 a very large scale at the flying fields in this country and 

 in France. 



That this program was successfully carried through, 

 and was approaching completion when the armistice was 

 signed, was due chiefly on the scientific side to the bril- 

 liant work of my colleagues Majors E. C. Schneider, J. L. 

 Whitney, Knight Dunlap and Captain H. F. Pierce, and 

 on the administrative side to the splendid cooperation of 

 Colonel W. H. Wilmer and Lieutenant-Colonel E. G. 

 Seibert. 



We have recently published a group of papers, 8 brief 

 t>ut fairly comprehensive in their technical details, and I 

 shall not now repeat what has there been said, but shall 

 confine myself to a few salient points. One of these is a 

 final and striking demonstration of our main thesis. 

 Schneider and Whitney went into the steel chamber and 



Y. Henderson, E. G. Seibert, E. C. Schneider, J. L. Whitney, 

 K. Dunlap, W. H. Wilmer, C. Berens, E. R. Lewis and S. Paton, 

 Journal American Medical Association, 1918, Vol. 71, pp. 1382- 

 1400. 



