Greetings in 2020.
One of the pleasures of cleaning up at the end of one year before the start of the next is the re-discovery of things misplaced or forgotten.
In this case I refer to a book purchased in 2015 but misplaced when I retired and moved out of my office at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s School of Medicine’s Department of Anesthesiology, where my interest in oxygen took root and was nourished by dual careers as a Pediatrician and Anesthesiologist who specialized in pediatric anesthesia.
Relevant to all Oxygenologist followers, the title of this now-dated but still useful volume is Oxygen and Living Processes: An Interdisciplinary Approach, edited by Daniel L. Gilbert (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1981).
In 18 chapters organized into four parts, the authors write about most aspects of oxygen of interest to the curious novice.
Part I: General Aspects of Oxygen, includes essays about the “discovery” of oxygen, its astronomical origins as a terrestrial element, its ecology in the biosphere, and the significance of its reactive forms.
Part II: Biology of Oxygen, includes entries about oxygen production by photosynthesis, its toxic effects on unicellular organisms, oxygen exchange and transport in various biological systems, its biological chemistry, and the role antioxidants play in the face of oxygen radical chemistry.
Part III: Human Aspects of Oxygen, covers pulmonary oxygen toxicity, oxygen use in closed environments, consideration of how oxygen “tension” varies in different clinical scenarios, and the special risk oxygen poses to premature infants–a risk we now understand applies in different ways to all humans who require “medicinal” oxygen.
Part IV: Concluding Remarks, closes the volume with an overall biological view cast in terms of the risks and effects posed by hypoxia, hyperoxia, normoxia, and the practical and clinical considerations as they were understood in 1981, before closing with a succinct summary.
At the time of its publication, Oxygen and Living Processes: An Interdisciplinary Approach, may have been the most complete, authoritative source on oxygen in existence. Even so, it appeared when integrated understanding of oxygen’s place in planetary ecology, climate, biological niches, and clinical settings was in its toddlerhood if not infancy.
Over the coming months I will offer nuggets extracted from this excellent book to enhance the conversation about oxygen. Until the next time, Take a Deep Breath…and Think.
Peace.
