RISKED LIFE FOR SCIENCE
PROFESSOR DIES IN BUS A scientist who several times gambled with death to prove his theories collapsed and died —in a bus. . He was Professor Sir Joseph Barcroft. Death came to him as he was going home to lunch from the Cambridge phisiological laboratory where he had worked for 27 years. He was 74. Acknowledged the greatest British expert on the respiratory function of the blood, Sir Joseph once lived for a week in a sealed glass chamber to study the effects of lack of oxygen.
While relays of Cambridge students kept anxious watch outside he recorded his reactions as the oxygen content of the air he was breathing was gradually reduced. A long scar and the loss of the pulse in his left wrist were lifelong reminders of that experiment. An incision, made to extract blood for analysis, healed badly. During the 1914-18 war he walked into a chamber charged with prussic acid gas to prove to the Government his contention that it had no lethal effect on men. He took a dog with him. - •
The dog was dead in lmin. 35sec. The professor walked out smiling after ten minutes.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/BPB19470728.2.46
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Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 11, Issue 59, 28 July 1947, Page 8
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195RISKED LIFE FOR SCIENCE Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 11, Issue 59, 28 July 1947, Page 8
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