Problems in the resuscitation of mammals from body temperatures below 0°C

• Published in: Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences Biological sciences, 1957-12, Vol.147 (929), p.533-544
• Main Author: Smith, Audrey U.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 0080-4649; 2053-9193; 2053-9193
• DOI: 10.1098/rspb.1957.0077

Two hundred and seventy-five years have passed since Robert Boyle discovered that extreme cold prevented the putrefaction of animal tissues. He found that frogs and fish actually survived for short periods when the water surrounding them had frozen, but succumbed after several days’ encasement in ice. Boyle described these as promiscuous experiments. He also reported two modes of death in humans exposed to intense cold. Usually the extremities were gradually invaded by numbness which spread over the entire body so that the individual died insensibly. By contrast, horsemen wearing armour were seized violently around the waist by the cold. It caused them unspeakable abdominal pains and other torments which continued until the subjects died from exhaustion (Boyle 1683). Boyle’s observations have since been amply confirmed, and today it is well known that cold blooded animals do not survive complete freezing of all their body water (Scholander et al. 1953). Warm blooded animals, including the hibernators, are even more sensitive to chilling. Their breathing and heart beats stop at deep body temperatures well above freezing point. The animals do not recover spontaneously when rewarmed and were therefore assumed to be dead (Adolph 1951; Lyman & Chatfield 1955). A few years ago there seemed little possibility that mammals could be resuscitated from body temperatures below 0° C, and no prospect whatsoever that the work on storing isolated mammalian cells at very low temperatures would ever be applicable to the intact animal. There were, however, reports from Russia that bats and ground squirrels had been revived from sub-zero temperatures (Kalabuchov 1934; Murigin 1937). Then we heard that Dr Andjus of the University of Belgrade had shown that rats chilled till breathing and heart beats stopped were not necessarily dead (Andjus 1951). We developed his techniques at Mill Hill so that rats and mice can now be easily revived after an hour of suspended animation at body temperatures just above zero (Andjus & Smith 1955; Andjus & Lovelock 1955; Goldzveig & Smith 1956). Meanwhile Dr Parkes and Dr Lovelock and I had found that golden hamsters survived respiratory and cardiac arrest at deep body temperatures below 0° C (Smith, Lovelock & Parkes 1954). In some animals the deep body temperature fell as low as –5° C without the formation of ice in any of the tissues. These supercooled hamsters were readily resuscitated and recovered fully. Others froze progressively until, w