First aid in the Royal Navy.

Date:
[1914]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: First aid in the Royal Navy. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    Do not take a light with you, as the gas may be explosive. (11) CAISSON DISEASE. In the Diving Manual, on page 61, there is a chapter entitled “ First Aid to the Diver in case of Accident.” Most of this subject has been dealt with in various parts of these lectures, but caisson disease requires mention. This is a condition caused by a diver coming- up too quickly from greater depths than six fathoms, and his symptoms are due to bubbles of gas forming in his spinal cord and elsewhere. (As he goes down, he is subjected to more and more pressure, and the air has to be forced to him with greater and greater pressure. The air becomes dissolved in his blood in much the same manner as gas is dissolved in water in making a bottle of soda-water. If now he comes up too quickly, the air is freed from his blood rather in the same way as when the cork is pulled out of the bottle of soda-water. Bubbles then form in the spinal cgrd, &c., and the symptoms of caisson disease come on.)