TO STUDY HIGH ALTITUDE PHYSIOLOGICAL CHANGES

Eight medical investigators, five of them graduates of the University, and the other three from British universities, will sail from New York today on the Santa Teresa for Peru, where they will undertake the first studies ever made of the physiological changes which enable people to live permanently to high altitudes.

The party will make their headquarters at Gerro de Pasco, Peru, situated in the Andes at a height of over 14,000 feet, where there is one of the largest copper mines in the world. The town is one of the loftiest places on the globe where any considerable number of people live.

The object of the expedition will be to study the changes in the heart, circulation, respiration, and chemical composition of the blood which enable the residents of Cerro de Pasco to live there in comfort and to arduous work in the copper-mines, at an altitude in which most people would be able to do comparatively little on account of the rarity of the air. Scientists have frequently spent a few days or weeks at great heights to test the effect of the altitude on themselves, but the studies made on the natives of Cerro de Pasco will be the first of their kind.

Problems of Interest to Aviators

The facts to be secured about the way in which the body adapts itself to a reduced supply of oxygen are expected to prove useful in the treatment of certain diseases of the heart and lungs in which strikingly similar conditions occur. The problem is also of interest to aviators, who frequently suffer from the effects of flying at high altitudes.

The members of the party from the University will be Dr. Alfred C. Redfield '14, Assistant Professor of Physiology at the Medical School; Dr. Arlie V. Bock, M. D. '15, of the Massachusetts General Hospital; Dr. Henry S. Forbes '05, now engaged in research in industrial medicine at the University; Dr. C. A. L. Binger '10, of the Rockefeller Institute, New York, and Dr. George Harrop '12, of the Presbyterian Hospital, New York. The British members are Mr. Joseph Bancroft of Cambridge University, England, who organized the expedition, Professor J. G. Meakins of Edinburgh University, and Dr. Doggart of King's College, Cambridge, England. They will take with them an X-ray machine and a large quantity of other apparatus.

After completing the studies at Cerro de Pasco, the investigators expect to spend a short time at Ticleo, on the watershed of the Andes. Ticleo, which is at an altitude of 16,000 feet, is the highest standard gauge railroad station in the world. They will return by February first, and later in the year Mr. Bancroft will give a series of lectures at the Lowell Institute in Boston.

The expedition is financed by King's College, Cambridge, the Royal Society of London, the Carnegle Foundation at Edinburgh, the Rockefeller Institute, the Presbyterian Hospital, the University of Toronto, the Medical School at the University, and several people who are especially interested in the problems to be investigated.