Medicine: Blue Man

In London recently Professor Joseph Barcroft, world authority on chemical reactions of the blood, stepped out of a glass case. His face, arms, lips, ears and nose had turned blue. His torso was a barrel of barred indigo; his legs two uncertain aquamarine tendrils; even his nails were blue. He looked like a figure from a futuristic painting. But this blue man laughed, chatted and showed to admiring fellow-scientists the notes of observations he had made on his blood-reactions during the week he had spent in that glass case. His blueness was caused by the fact that the case was almost entirely airless. A small motor pumped through a cranny only “the minimum amount of air necessary to sustain life.” Stretching his length on an operating table, he had his arteries opened, his blood tested. He was glad to be blue, because this color change and the blood tests proved that he was right in his theory that there is not enough oxygen in the blood to compensate for loss of air even under the most favorable circumstances.

Last week Professor Barcroft was appointed Professor of Physiology at Cambridge.