Foreign News: Back to Biology

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Cramped in a small steel tank, breathing steamy compressed air, a Spanish doctor has been continuing the fight against Fascism that began when he was Premier of the Spanish Republic.

Copies of a British scientific magazine which arrived in the U.S. last week contained a report by famed British biologist J. B. S. Haldane of his experiments in the physiology of submarine crews. One of his 20 human guinea pigs was Dr. Juan Negrin, Premier of Spain during the last days of the Civil War. Under terrific air pressure, 53-year-old Dr. Negrin and the other subjects (mostly exiles) writhed with the bends, screwed up their faces with the pain of hammering headaches, as Professor Haldane tested the bodily effects of gases at various pressures.

Dr. Negrin was fighting his battle on familiar ground. Before his premiership he was a professor of biology, one of Spain's leading physiologists.