Abstract
THERE is now general agreement among physiologists that, as was originally concluded by Paul Bert, the formidable group of symptoms known as ‘mountain sickness’ is due essentially to the lowered partial pressure of oxygen owing to the diminished barometric pressure of high altitudes; also that the symptoms depend upon the lowered oxygen pressure being insufficient to saturate with oxygen to a normal extent the haemoglobin of the arterial blood, so that a normal pressure of oxygen is not maintained in the central nervous system. The defective saturation of the arterial blood shows itself by blueness, often extreme, of the lips and face. Persons who ascend by gradual stages to high altitudes are commonly found to be immune to mountain sickness; and this fact has been brought into extraordinary prominence by the experiences of the last Mount Everest expedition. Members of the expedition were completely immune to mountain sickness at a height of 27,000 feet, though persons going without acclimatisation to a similar barometric pressure in balloons or steel chambers lose consciousness rapidly, and would shortly be dead if they remained in the rarefied atmosphere.
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HALDANE, J. Acclimatisation to High Altitudes1. Nature 118, 702–703 (1926). https://doi.org/10.1038/118702a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/118702a0