Abstract
MOUNTAIN sickness is a form of asphyxia due to the diminished partial pressure of oxygen at great altitudes. The functional disturbances in this disorder are, however, not merely anoxial, but are largely the expression of a secondary and almost equally important deficiency of carbon dioxide in the blood and tissues. Deficiency of oxygen induces hyperpnea and acapnia: that is, overbreathing and the resulting deficiency of carbon dioxide. Acapnia in turn induces subnormal respiration and a continued or even increased deficiency of oxygen. Haldane, Priestley and Douglas1 demonstrated the correctness of Miescher's somewhat poetical formulation: “Over the oxygen supply of the body carbon dioxide spreads its protecting wings.”2 Henderson3 confirmed the importance of the relation between the two gases in respiration when he found that it was possible to produce so great a deficiency of carbon dioxide by over-ventilation of the lungs that thereafter an animal may die of lack of oxygen with no effort to breathe.
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References
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CHILDS, S., HAMLIN, H. & HENDERSON, Y. Possible Value of Inhalation of Carbon Dioxide in Climbing Great Altitudes. Nature 135, 457–458 (1935). https://doi.org/10.1038/135457a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/135457a0
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