Recent from talks
Griffith Pugh
Knowledge base stats:
Talk channels stats:
Members stats:
Griffith Pugh
Lewis Griffith Cresswell Evans Pugh (29 October 1909 – 22 December 1994), generally known as Griffith Pugh, was a British physiologist and mountaineer. He was the expedition physiologist on the 1953 British expedition that made the first ascent of Mount Everest, and a researcher into the effects of cold and altitude on human physiology.
Pugh's father was Lewis Pugh Evans Pugh KC, a Welsh barrister who practised in Calcutta, and who had two children: Griffith, and Gwladys Mary Pugh. Pugh went to Harrow School, and between 1928 and 1931 took a degree in law at New College, Oxford University, although he switched to medicine, which he studied for three more years, after which he qualified at St Thomas' Hospital, London, in 1938, where he subsequently worked.
On 5 September 1939, Pugh married Josephine Helen Cassel, daughter of Sir Felix Cassel and Lady Helen Grimston, and they had four children: David Sheridan Griffith Pugh, Simon Francis Pugh, Harriet Veronica Felicity Pugh (whose married name is Harriet Tuckey) and Oliver Lewis Evans Pugh.
Pugh was a keen skier, learning the skill in the Swiss resort of Engelberg as a child, and later competing in the World Championships. He was selected to represent Britain in the 1936 Winter Olympics in Garmisch-Partenkirchen in all three skiing disciplines but was unable to compete as a result of injury. He also made frequent trips to the Mont Blanc massif and the Bernese Oberland to climb.
Having served in the Royal Army Medical Corps in Britain, Greece, Crete, Egypt, Ceylon, Iraq and Jerusalem, Pugh was invited by fellow Harrovian W. J. Riddell, on the basis of his skiing and climbing expertise, to join the recently established School of Mountain Warfare at the Cedars resort in Lebanon, working for two years alongside A. D. M. Cox (an Oxford don and a considerable alpinist in his own right) and John Carryer. Pugh wrote papers for the School that were later used in the Army Training Manual, did much ski mountaineering, often ascending 3,000 to 4,000 feet, crossing 20 miles on trips that lasted up to 12 hours in self-contained units that could be self-sufficient for over a week, and training troops to oppose crack German mountain formations.
After the war, Pugh worked in Hammersmith in clinical research at the Post-Graduate Medical School. His much-noted eccentricity was already evident, as when he attached electrodes to his body and submerged himself in an ice bath from which he had to be rescued as the cold had paralysed him.[citation needed] He moved in 1950 to the Medical Research Council laboratories in Hampstead to work under Professor Otto Edholm in the Department of Human Physiology as head of the Laboratory of Field Physiology. He stayed there for the rest of his career.
Expedition leader Eric Shipton invited Pugh, now on the High Altitude Committee of the Medical Research Council, to accompany the British 1952 Cho Oyo expedition to perform research on oxygen equipment that would be useful on the following year's expedition to Mount Everest. Pugh realised that the best way to do this was to study climbers in the field at altitude, and he analysed rates of breathing, and food and fluid intake. His report on his findings was, according to George Band, a climber on the 1953 Mount Everest expedition, of "fundamental value" to that expedition. These included the need to drink considerably more than the usual three or four pints of liquid per day; on Mount Everest. Hunt reports that Pugh's advice was that they drink six or seven pints of fluid a day. In June 1952, Pugh reported to the Joint Himalayan Committee that the failure of the Swiss on Mount Everest in the spring of that year suggested that the British, who he deemed to be less fit and less experienced mountaineers, therefore needed to be supplied with "only the best oxygen equipment ... to put up a better performance than the Swiss".
Pugh's 1952 "seminal" report for the Medical Research Council was never published. The writer Michael Gill unearthed a copy with Pugh's other papers in the Mandeville Special Collection of the University of California, San Diego. He was surprised that it did not answer questions like the height at which to use oxygen, flow rates other than 4 L/m, and whether to use sleeping oxygen.
Hub AI
Griffith Pugh AI simulator
(@Griffith Pugh_simulator)
Griffith Pugh
Lewis Griffith Cresswell Evans Pugh (29 October 1909 – 22 December 1994), generally known as Griffith Pugh, was a British physiologist and mountaineer. He was the expedition physiologist on the 1953 British expedition that made the first ascent of Mount Everest, and a researcher into the effects of cold and altitude on human physiology.
Pugh's father was Lewis Pugh Evans Pugh KC, a Welsh barrister who practised in Calcutta, and who had two children: Griffith, and Gwladys Mary Pugh. Pugh went to Harrow School, and between 1928 and 1931 took a degree in law at New College, Oxford University, although he switched to medicine, which he studied for three more years, after which he qualified at St Thomas' Hospital, London, in 1938, where he subsequently worked.
On 5 September 1939, Pugh married Josephine Helen Cassel, daughter of Sir Felix Cassel and Lady Helen Grimston, and they had four children: David Sheridan Griffith Pugh, Simon Francis Pugh, Harriet Veronica Felicity Pugh (whose married name is Harriet Tuckey) and Oliver Lewis Evans Pugh.
Pugh was a keen skier, learning the skill in the Swiss resort of Engelberg as a child, and later competing in the World Championships. He was selected to represent Britain in the 1936 Winter Olympics in Garmisch-Partenkirchen in all three skiing disciplines but was unable to compete as a result of injury. He also made frequent trips to the Mont Blanc massif and the Bernese Oberland to climb.
Having served in the Royal Army Medical Corps in Britain, Greece, Crete, Egypt, Ceylon, Iraq and Jerusalem, Pugh was invited by fellow Harrovian W. J. Riddell, on the basis of his skiing and climbing expertise, to join the recently established School of Mountain Warfare at the Cedars resort in Lebanon, working for two years alongside A. D. M. Cox (an Oxford don and a considerable alpinist in his own right) and John Carryer. Pugh wrote papers for the School that were later used in the Army Training Manual, did much ski mountaineering, often ascending 3,000 to 4,000 feet, crossing 20 miles on trips that lasted up to 12 hours in self-contained units that could be self-sufficient for over a week, and training troops to oppose crack German mountain formations.
After the war, Pugh worked in Hammersmith in clinical research at the Post-Graduate Medical School. His much-noted eccentricity was already evident, as when he attached electrodes to his body and submerged himself in an ice bath from which he had to be rescued as the cold had paralysed him.[citation needed] He moved in 1950 to the Medical Research Council laboratories in Hampstead to work under Professor Otto Edholm in the Department of Human Physiology as head of the Laboratory of Field Physiology. He stayed there for the rest of his career.
Expedition leader Eric Shipton invited Pugh, now on the High Altitude Committee of the Medical Research Council, to accompany the British 1952 Cho Oyo expedition to perform research on oxygen equipment that would be useful on the following year's expedition to Mount Everest. Pugh realised that the best way to do this was to study climbers in the field at altitude, and he analysed rates of breathing, and food and fluid intake. His report on his findings was, according to George Band, a climber on the 1953 Mount Everest expedition, of "fundamental value" to that expedition. These included the need to drink considerably more than the usual three or four pints of liquid per day; on Mount Everest. Hunt reports that Pugh's advice was that they drink six or seven pints of fluid a day. In June 1952, Pugh reported to the Joint Himalayan Committee that the failure of the Swiss on Mount Everest in the spring of that year suggested that the British, who he deemed to be less fit and less experienced mountaineers, therefore needed to be supplied with "only the best oxygen equipment ... to put up a better performance than the Swiss".
Pugh's 1952 "seminal" report for the Medical Research Council was never published. The writer Michael Gill unearthed a copy with Pugh's other papers in the Mandeville Special Collection of the University of California, San Diego. He was surprised that it did not answer questions like the height at which to use oxygen, flow rates other than 4 L/m, and whether to use sleeping oxygen.