15.: 



NA TURE 



[July 29, 1922 



The Physiology of Life in the Andes. 1 

 By J. Barcroft, C.B.E., F.R.S. 



THE recent expedition to Peru was initiated under 

 the auspices of the Royal Society. So far as 

 the British members were concerned, it was financed in 

 part by a grant made by that body, in part by two 

 substantial private subscriptions from Sir Robert 

 Hadfield, then on the Council of the Royal Society, and 

 Sir Peter Mackie, who has on previous occasions been a 

 staunch supporter of anthropological research under- 

 taken by the Royal Society. In part also its expenses 

 were met by grants from the Moray and Carnegie funds 

 in Edinburgh. These grants paid some of the expenses 

 of the expedition as a whole, together with the personal 

 expenses of three of its members — namely, Dr. J. C. 

 Meakins, professor of therapeutics in Edinburgh ; Mr. 

 J. H. Doggart of King's College, Cambridge ; and myself. 

 The project was warmly supported by a number of 

 institutions on the American continent, each of which 

 sent a membefof the party at its own expense. Harvard 

 Medical School was represented by Dr. Bock, Dr. 

 Forbes, and jointly with Toronto Medical School by 

 Prof. Redfield; the Presbyterian Hospital, New York, 

 by Dr. George Harrop ; and the Rockefeller Institute by 

 Dr. Carl Binger. The American and British parties 

 sailed from New York and Liverpool respectively in the 

 middle of November, the American section arriving in 

 Peru a fortnight or more before we did. 



I have perhaps given the impression that the party 

 consisted of two sections from different continents, 

 sharply marked off from one another, and neither of 

 which had seen the other before. This impression is 

 erroneous, for tin' whole idea of the expedition grew 

 from the fertile soil of collaboration in the researches 

 carried out under a single roof. Dr. Redfield and Dr. 

 Bock had been working in Cambridge (England) 

 throughout the previous year, and Dr. Harrop had 

 been there for a short time. There the scheme had 

 been hatched, the methods standardised, and a number 

 of the controls carried out. 



Why did we go to Peru, or, more precisely, to Cerro 

 de Pasco ? The question may most easily be answered 

 by comparing Peru with some of the other localities to 

 which we might have gone, and to which others have 

 gone before us ; for example, Monte Rosa, Pike's Peak 

 in Colorado, the Peak of Teneriffe, and the Himalayas. 

 Without going at length into the merits of each, the 

 advantages of Peru will be sufficiently apparent if I 

 compare it to one of the above, and I will select one of 

 which I have personal experience, namely, the Peak of 

 Teneriffe. Peru and Teneriffe have in common the 

 merit of being close to the sea. In either case the 

 baggage can be put on board at Liverpool or Southamp- 

 ton and taken to your mountain base without further 

 transhipment. Peru, however, possesses the first 

 necessity of laboratory equipment — an abundant supply 

 of wdter — up to a height of 16,000 ft., i.e. 4000 ft. 

 higher than the Peak. In the latter place the highest 

 altitude at which I know of water is 7000 ft., while at 

 11,000 ft. — near the situation of the Alta Vista hut — 

 there is an ice-cave from which water may be obtained 

 by melting the ice. 



Again, the conditions of transport are vastly different 



1 From a discourse delivered at the Royal Institution on Friday, June 9. 

 NO. 2752, VOL. I IO] 



in Peru from what they are in Teneriffe. In Teneriffe 

 everything goes up the mountains by mule. The 

 amount of apparatus which can be taken up is there- 

 fore small ; and if it arrives whole at its destination the 

 worker is fortunate. If it arrives broken, there is little 

 hope of mending it. We were very fortunate, at an 

 early stage of our preparations, in getting in touch with 

 Mr. Oliver Bury, the chairman of the Peruvian Cor- 

 poration. The Peruvian Corporation owns, among 

 other railways, the trunk line which goes directly in- 

 land from Lima, climbs the Andes to a height of almost 

 16,000 ft., and then drops down to Oroya (12,000 ft.), 

 situated on the pampa between the two parallel ranges 

 of the Cordilleras. From Oroya railways run north 

 to Huancayo, and south to Cerro de Pasco (14,200 ft.), 

 which place was to become our principal seat of opera- 

 tions. To the Peruvian Corporation we owe our 

 laboratory. For the purpose we were assigned a luggage 

 van, 45 ft. in length, together with a goods van which 

 we used as a store ; and these they offered to take to 

 any locality on their system at which we desired to 

 work. While the American members of the party 

 awaited our arrival at Lima, they fitted up the luggage 

 van and made a very fine laboratory of it. At one side 

 the door was closed up and windows put in its place, 

 benches and shelves were fitted, electrical wiring was 

 installed, and ultimately we had electric light, power, 

 and heat. What greater contrast in efficiency could 

 exist than between our mobile laboratory at Cerro, 

 jacked up off the bogies to prevent vibration, fitted 

 with X-ray plant and apparatus for the measurements 

 of hydrogen ions, on one hand, and the Alta Vista Hut 

 in Teneriffe, with its paraffin stoves which emitted little 

 but smuts and barely sufficed to melt a few handfuls of 

 ice. Of more account, however, than all these advan- 

 tages was the fact that, up to an altitude of 16,000 ft. 

 in Peru there is a population most of which is connected 

 with the mining industry. This population may be 

 divided into two categories, namely, the Anglo-Saxon 

 officials and the native labourers. The latter are of 

 Indian descent, and as a race have lived at this altitude 

 for many generations. In Cerro they are designated 

 " Cholo," a name that has no exact anthropological 

 significance, but I shall use it and so avoid an assump- 

 tion of anthropological knowledge which I do not 

 possess. 



To judge from the customs which prevail in the out- 

 lying villages, the Cholo is not far removed from a very 

 primitive civilisation. Within a mule-ride of Gollaris- 

 quisga there are communities in which private owner- 

 ship of land does not exist ; the land, as in some of the 

 Russian communities which are, or were, on the Canadian 

 prairie, belongs to the village. The produce, if the 

 village is small, is placed in the church ; in the larger 

 es there is a store for this purpose. If the stock 

 of some commodity has run out, some person goes to 

 such a market as Huancayo and buys some more, not 

 for himself, but for the village. I said " buys " ; but 

 there are places to which money has scarcely penetrated, 

 and where the exchange of commodities is still a process 

 of barter. The condition of medical science in these 

 villages may be gathered from the fact that such 



