First Steps in Scientific Knowledge

The book is divided into various parts Part I: Animals, 84 pages, Part II and Part III: Plants, Stones, and Rocks, 70 pages, Part IV and V: Physics and Chemistry, 129 pages, Part VI and VII: Anatomy and Physiology, 91 pages. Green cloth binding. Figures interspersed throughout the text. Some water staining on pages. Handy text for scientists of the time. Complete. Paul Bert (1833-1886), French physiologist, politician, and diplomat, was the founder of modern aerospace medicine. He found that an animal illness at high altitudes caused mainly by the low oxygen content of the sparse atmosphere. Bert also made a study of the bends, suffered by deep-sea divers coming up too quickly to the surface from the great pressures of the depths. Bert demonstrated that high external pressures force large quantities of atmospheric nitrogen to dissolve in the blood, then during rapid decompression the nitrogen forms gas bubbles that obstruct capillaries. In 1878, he published the first results of hyperbaric experiments, considered the cornerstone publication for diving medicine, hyperbaric medicine, and aerospace medicine. Bert was also the inventor/developer of the mumps vaccine.…