Abstract
THESE meetings have occurred triennially with the exception of the interruption caused by the War. Since the armistice, physiologists have assembled turn at Paris, Edinburgh, and Stockholm, but this the first occasion on which they have congregated outside Europe. The remarkable success of this experiment has far exeeeded the expectations of the most optimistic among its promoters. More than 300 registered European representatives with, many cases, wives or husbands crossed the Atlantic; 350 of these sailed on the s.s. Minnekahda, thus giving Europeans an additional opportunity for that contact and exchange of ideas which constitute the chief assets of a congress. This trip, though lasting ten days, was favoured with delightful weather and filled with a variety of amusements and sporting events; yet the intellectual side was not wholly neglected, for the daily lectures ranged from “The Holy Land” by a returning American lady who had been visiting Christ's home town to “The Mystery of Life” by Prof. A. V. Hill. In discussing the interpretation of the records of heat production by living and dying tissues, he pointed out the necessity accounting for all the purely physical changes first; for example, the enhanced resting heat-rate of stimulated muscle is satisfactorily accounted for by the effect of the resulting increase of osmotic pressure in lowering the aqueous vapour pressure of the muscle and so causing a condensation of vapour from the surrounding medium.
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The Thirteenth International Physiological Congress. Nature 124, 557–558 (1929). https://doi.org/10.1038/124557a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/124557a0