Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 11.djvu/337

Rh the results of that one of my experiments in which I reached the lowest degree of pressure. My pulse had grown more frequent, having risen from 60 to 85; the pressure was then only 40 centimetres. I now began to inhale oxygen from the bag, and at once the pulse fell to 65, at which point it stood during the remainder of the experiment, and at last even fell to 48. In the mean while the pressure had fallen to 246 millimetres. This is exactly the pressure on the highest



summit of the Himalaya—the same degree of pressure which was so near proving fatal to Glaisher and Coxwell; I reached this point without the slightest sense of discomfort, or, to speak more accurately, the unpleasant sensations I felt at the beginning had entirely disappeared, A bird in the cylinder with me was leaning on one side, and very sick. It was my wish to continue the experiment till the bird died, but the steam-pump, conspiring, as I suspect, with the people