Abstract
ONE would hardly suppose, after reading this simply-told narrative of physical achievements, that the senior member—and shall we say, with Mrs. Workman's permission, leader—of the party among the peaks and glaciers of the Nun Kun group was compelled some years ago to retire from his medical practice on account of ill-health. Evidently, at great altitudes, where the vitality is lowered by insomnia attending deficient oxygenation, and where mental depression and attacks of irresolution follow a disturbed circulation, the successful explorer depends wholly on having his muscles under the complete control of a resolute mind for that last supreme fight against the irresistible instinct to descend to his natural environment. The Arctic explorer can sleep, can eat, and is the better for work to do; the mountain climber handicaps himself by his load of protective non-conductors; his respiratory difficulties are increased when in the only position of rest left to the biped, and every momentary doze through sheer exhaustion is terminated by frantic efforts to avoid the intolerable feeling of suffocation. Anyone who has experienced these troubles, which beset all climbers—even the luckv few who are proof against mountain sickness—will admire the mental as well as the physical qualities of the altitude record-breaker; for, judging bv the recent sordid controversy among Arctic ex-plorers, “records” have still a market value among geographers.
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References
"Peaks and Glaciers of Nun Kun: a Record of Pioneer-Exploration and Mountaineering in the Punjab Himalaya." By Fanny Bullock Workman and Dr. W. H. Workman. Pp. xv + 204. (London: Constable and Co., Ltd., 1909.) Price 18s. net.
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HOLLAND, T. Mountaineering in the North-West Himalaya 1 . Nature 84, 78–80 (1910). https://doi.org/10.1038/084078a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/084078a0