Out Cold

Philip Jaekl

The word "hypothermia" has Greek origins meaning "under heat." Its symptoms initially involve shivering poorly coordinated laborious movement and disorientation. At extremes heart rate decreases significantly while retrograde amnesia and confusion set in. After further decline victims can begin to make irrational decisions and talk incoherently. For reasons poorly understood they've even been known to take off their clothes and seek confined spaces before death reigns. Yet hypothermia has another side--it can be therapeutic.

In Out Cold science writer Phil Jaekl tells the history of therapeutic hypothermia from Ancient Egypt where cold was used to treat schizophrenia to Nazi science experiments science-fiction-inspired preservation attempts and a whole host of modern-day researchers harnessing cold in surprising ways to save lives.

We understand hypothermia now better than ever before and we have numerous new life-saving cooling techniques at our disposal yet a macabre stigma still hangs over the field. This book will delve into a dark history from which science is now coming out on top.

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