April Cazones, age 15, of Miami, Fla., for her question:
WHEN DID AEROSPACE MEDICINE DEVELOP?
Aerospace medicine is the branch of preventive medicine that is concerned with the physiological and psychological stress on the human body in flight. The study of effects within the earth's atmosphere is also called aviation medicine. Beyond the atmosphere the study of effects is also called space medicine.
Aerospace medicine was recognized as a subspecialty by the Amercian Medical Association in 1953.
Actually, aviation medicine is rooted in the early 18th century physiological studies of balloonists, some of whom were physicians. In 1784, a year after the first balloon flight by the French physicist Jean de Rozier, a Boston physician named John Jeffries made the first study of upper air composition from a balloon.
The first comprehensive studies of health effects in air flight were made by the French physician Paul Bert who published his research on the effects of altered air pressure and composition of humans in 1878.
In 1894 the Viennese physiologist Herman Von Schrotter designed an oxygen mask with which the meteorologist Arthur Berson set an altitude record of 30,000 feet.
With the advent of the airplane, the first standards for military pilots were established in 1912. Significant work in this area was directed by a doctor named Theodore Lyster, now called the father of American aviation medicine.
Lyster set up the Aviation Medicine Research Board in 1917 in Mineola, N.Y. The School of Flight Surgeons was established the following year and the Aeromedical Association was founded in 1929.
In 1934 facilities were designed at the Wright Airfield in Daytona, Ohio, to study the effects of high performance flight on humans.
Specialists in aviation medicine study the reactions of humans to the stresses of air travel. They are concerned with the proper screening of candidates for flight training, the maintenance of maximum efficiency among aircrews and with clinically oriented research into the effects of flight on the body. They also cooperate actively with aeronautical engineers in the development of safe aircraft.
Aviation medicine is concerned primarily with the effects on human beings of high speed and high altitude and involves the study of such factors as acceleration and deceleration, atmospheric pressure and decompression.
In civil aviation medicine, an additional concern is passenger airsickness.
In itself, high speed does not produce harmful symptoms. What can be dangerous are high acceleration or deceleration forces.
A critical consideration in aircraft travel is the continuing physiological requirement for oxygen. High altitude airplanes must be provided with oxygen equipment.