Interaction of Temperature and Pressure in Intact Animals

Abstract

Repeatedly over the past 150 years physiologists and biochemists have encountered situations in which agents the effects of which on simple chemical systems were presumed to be thoroughly understood and readily quantifiable in terms of prevailing physiochemical theory were found to produce profound and also quantifiable biological effects. Such situations have tended to encourage research programs predicated on the assumption that in view of the “simple” nature of the agent employed — or the parameter manipulated — a careful analysis of what might be termed stress/strain relations should have an excellent chance of describing and identifying the particular component or response of the organisms studied which must hold the key to the observed effects. In more modern terms, it was hoped that such research programs could yield in one relatively simple step significant insight into the molecular mechanisms controlling some particular regulatory mechanism. Time has tended to deal unkindly with such hopes: in case after case the hoped-for simplicity perceived at the outset has resolved itself into increasingly complex successive arrays of interacting factors progressively blocking attainment of the originally perceived goal in a welter of increasingly detailed explanations of ever more restricted scope.