There is something very appealing about the idea of a scientist doing experiments on himself – except, perhaps, when the experiments involve suffocation. The idea of a chap deliberately starving himself of oxygen in a sealed cabinet, and noting the physiological effects. Ten minutes, lips turn blue; 20 minutes, blinding headache and knocking feebly on glass, mouthing “Get me out of here” – is surely quite horrifying. Anyone a bit sensitive to the idea of premature burial should probably steer clear of Martin Goodman’s Suffer and Survive, this being an account of the life of the great physiologist John Scott Haldane (1860-1936), whose life’s work was to discover, through direct experience, often as not, the exact level of danger involved in breathing bad air, poisoned air and air in insufficient amounts.

The range and significance of Haldane’s work are indicated by the book’s subtitle: Gas Attacks, Miners’ Canaries, Spacesuits and the Bends. This was not (ironically) airy science: this was research of a practical, human nature, for practical, human ends. Miners perished in pit explosions – but not always from the blast. Haldane was a regular visitor to coal mines where disasters had occurred, capturing air samples and examining the bodies of the suffocated. He analysed the air known as “afterdamp”, and came up with the idea of the canary in the box, as an early indicator of the presence of carbon monoxide. His interest was environmental: what was necessary to allow man to breathe in conditions of underwater pressure, under a bombardment of German gas, or on top of a mountain? As the scientific member of the Deep Sea Diving Committee, he was responsible for the first diving tables published in 1907 – on which all subsequent decompression guidelines have been based. He devised a primitive gas mask for soldiers in the trenches. And, when workers were dying mysteriously in east London sewers, Haldane was first through the manhole cover to find out why.

The name may ring a bell. JS Haldane was the father of the more famous JBS Haldane, the geneticist and evolutionary biologist. It was JBS who posited the idea of test-tube babies, and who wrote Being the Right Size (1928) which resulted in Haldane’s Principle (which broadly states that the size of an organism determines how complex it will be). But there is another famous biological principle that broadly states that the apple does not fall far from the tree, and JBS evidently shared his father’s passion for recklessly sealing himself in decompression chambers. In his autobiography, JBS remarks of a resulting perforated eardrum that “although one is somewhat deaf, one can blow tobacco smoke out of the ear in question, which is a social accomplishment”.

So Suffer and Survive is the story of a scientist who was somewhat eclipsed by his own son. Is that why Goodman chose to write it? The author’s exact motivation is a mystery, to be truthful – as is his exact qualification in the subject. Here we have a (generally) chronological account of Haldane’s work – down Welsh mines; up Colorado mountains – but it’s hard to discover any particular angle. Haldane’s work saved many lives, but in order to make a claim for him as outstandingly humanitarian, one would need to make comparisons that are beyond the scope of this book. Haldane was an outspoken critic of the teaching he received in Edinburgh (where he studied alongside Arthur Conan Doyle); but Goodman doesn’t speculate how his career might have been adversely affected by his arrogant attitudes towards his peers in academia. What emerges instead, however, is a driven Scottish man with an enormously amusing moustache involved in the day-to-day business of pushing the boundaries of helpful knowledge, and using his own poor wee lungs to do it.

By an odd coincidence, I have recently been wondering, “Are the effects of carbon monoxide reversible?” Haldane answered that question quite fully. In fact, exposure to carbon monoxide is pretty much the subject of the book. One of its characteristic effects, apparently, is to befuddle a person until he repeats himself. Haldane’s daughter, the writer Naomi Mitchison, recollected that whenever her father dashed off to a mining disaster, he would telegraph home to say, “I am alright.” When a second, identically worded telegram would arrive an hour or two later, “we at home would know that he had been breathing too much carbon monoxide.” The canary in the box wasn’t as cruel as it sounds, incidentally. The box handle contained a tiny oxygen cylinder for reviving the bird once it dropped off its perch (or started to say things it had said already).

Personally, I found this book quite a struggle. In fact, I started to keep notes of my own physiological reactions. 100 hundred pages, breathing quickens; 200 pages, furious underlining; 300 pages, bursts into tears. Partly, this was frustration with the author for not justifying his book in general terms; mainly, however, it was his deployment of unattached participles, which necessitated a wearisome amount of patient rereading (“Fifteen years his junior, they were neighbours”) until I finally collapsed and had to be dragged clear of the book by helpful relatives. I’m sure this was an unworthy reaction, but I felt obliged by the example of Haldane’s own rigorous self-experimentation protocols to be honest about it, as it may save the lives of others.

Out of breath

Haldane, was happiest when down a coal mine – ideally testing his newly invented breathing equipment. Naturally, he didn’t just collect the poisonous gases on offer – carbon monoxide and methane – he sampled them. ‘At the end of the experiment I could hardly stand, and could not walk alone without falling down.’ That, observes his biographer, was a relatively light day at the office.

SUFFER AND SURVIVE: The Extreme Life of JS Haldane by Martin Goodman
Simon & Schuster £14.99 pp422
Buy the book here at the offer price of £13.49 (inc p&p)

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