Dark Iroko benches arranged in rows across the room. The huge, scrolling blackboard framed with wood at the front was part of the raised front bench dais for the teacher who would have been wearing their chalk-dusted black gown Lab stools neatly arranged under the benches awaiting the next cohort of students. Tripods set out as if waiting for another experiment; close beside them, Bunsen burners with orange rubber pipes; test tube racks alongside. In front of the windows storage cupboards and benches stacked high with ancient textbooks, microscopes, labelled and ordered samples of rocks and jars of formalin with heavens knows what ancient specimens inside them. A huge Pyrex boiler and condenser – the still – sat in one corner of the back bench: racks with empty beakers, conical flasks and bottles on the opposite one: a large Periodic table hung in the space between them.
The silent room looked like a perfect 1960s laboratory. Indeed, it was. It had been donated to the museum in the early 1990s when a local university was refurbishing and updating their science facilities. But this lab smelled utterly wrong.
I can’t quite describe the familiar smell of labs in the 1970s; a mingling of iodine, chlorine, burning, carbolic soap and floor polish – from cleaning down after dissections – maybe a bit of acetone and sulphur thrown into the mix? In those days all the supplies were of coal gas – you could always smell it in the background because a little bit would escape from each Bunsen. I don’t think I can ever remember going into a working lab that didn’t have a pile of glassware in the sink, waiting for someone to wash out the often smelly contents with Decon. Today’s labs smell very different; health & safety regulations, dishwashers, elbow grease, and fume cupboards that exhaust funky gases mean they don’t smell of anything. Except maybe of “hospital”?
Unlike the nuns, my favourite science teacher – Mrs G. – was kind, enthusiastic and encouraged me to learn that some of the most curious natural phenomena weren’t the result of “magic” or “pixies” or “God’s intervention”. She didn’t just rabbit on about the visible spectrum, frequency and amplitudes but spoke of rainbows and colours More than just telling, as much as possible she encouraged us to get outdoors into the school garden and observe the living world; we set up our own experiments; we played with huge magnets till we got the hang of their ability to push not just pull; there were explosions and mishaps; we built circuits and passed electric shocks around the room; we had field trips away to rocky shores, to botanical gardens, to the zoo and even an awayday to a scientific conference.
Instead of allowing children and young people to be fascinated b pondwater – teeming with tiny organisms – that they have collected from a stagnant pond somewhere, today’s risk assessments have taken every drop of fun! out of science lessons: a decade before David Attenborough produced “Life on Earth” Mrs. G. competently and professionally enabled us to learn the history of life on this planet in a hands-on way that made perfect sense.
She highlighted the arrival of blue-green algae, whose presence marked a point of no return, to the production of oxygen that enables human beings to stay alive. How did she condense three thousand million years of evolution – vast periods of time that utterly baffle the imagination – into a 40 minute lesson? How did she introduce us to processes like photosynthesis, respiration and cell division with such clarity? Science is all about predictions and explaining things we cannot see. We had no internet or animations, only black and white text-heavy tomes with few, if any, illustrations. But Mrs. G brought it all to life! An early eco-warrior, she even introduced us to the idea that carbon dioxide pouring out of industrial chimneys might present a problem.
Not long after I left school, I signed up to Greenpeace – my parents and friends though I was nuts! It was 1974 and Greta Thunberg wasn’t even born yet.
My love for all things scientific had begun even earlier when I was a child. My dad used to set up puzzles and ask me “how does that work? Or what you think of this”? – he was giving me the gift of scientific enquiry and early skills in setting up experimental hypotheses. I was never, ever, ever told to “shut up and stop asking questions” – such a killer of curiosity. No-one ever told me that girls shouldn’t do science. Or that loving it was geeky. I’d make a stab at guessing how things worked, but dad – in the way of all dads – always knew what to do to find the answer. “Lets’ go and find out”. It was an adventure.
When I was about 10 years old, he built a canoe for me. I learned how to paddle, how to capsize (safely) and soon graduated to crew in his dinghy, a Lark class racer. Eventually, dad passed her on to me when he moved up to bigger, grander yachts. I loved her. She taught me all about physics – my least favourite science when I was a schoolgirl, but essential for the physiologist I was eventually to become. Lordy! How I hated all those formulae, but when I fell out of the boat – a lot! – I learned that bubbles of air will always rise to the surface; my first introduction to the Gas Laws. Luffing. Tacking. Windward. Leeward. I learned to read the weather, the tides, the language of wind direction and power. Fluid mechanics and Meteorology.
What happens if you move the centreboard up or down? What happens when you push or pull the tiller? Experimenting to feel how a boat sails. Learning how to manage the sheets was tricky; which hand for letting the jib out or sheeting in the main? I’m a very clumsy person – today’s it’s called dyspraxia – so I had lots of problems getting my hands right, especially if it got gusty and the boat got harder to steer. But I was nimble and able to move quickly, so in general my Lark taught me that I prefer to be crewing rather than helming. I’d rather be sitting forward or hanging out on the trapeze. Wind in my face, leaning back, reading the swell and the sound of water on the hull – sparkles, ripples or flat patches. Feels like flying. (you can see a Lark sailing if you click here ). The relentless, clanking sound of halyards on masts is instantly evocative of child-free, sailing days – usually Sundays – when we got out on the water. Afterwards? gin & tonic or a pint, caramel wafers and roast dinner with Yorkshire pudding. Lots of craic.
So what does life on the ocean wave have to do with this visit to a well-preserved, mid-century biology lab? There is a point to this story…I learned to handle boats in the days before neoprene was invented or discovered. In the cold, north Atlantic and Irish Sea. Or lochs in wet and rainy Scotland. Cable sweaters and baggy shorts were the order of the day; I’m surprised that we didn’t sink. Or freeze to death in the icy water which has a survival time of about 12 minutes even in summer.
So I asked daft questions about thermoregulation when I was a child. I wondered why people’s lips went blue when they got cold after a dunking (posh name, cold immersion reaction)? Why do our hands go completely numb when they are cold; they go bright red and tingly as they warm. What’s going on? Now I know that this response is called the intermittent Hunting reaction. Named after traditional Inuit seal hunters this mechanism evolved to protect us from frostbite and is all about the supply of (warm) blood to cold, exposed extremities. Today I know more than most people ever need to know about cyanosis and how blood vessels near the surface close up (constrict) leading to bluish-greyish tint. Cyanosis also happens at altitude – as experienced by a bunch of critical care students on a trek to Kathmandu – and to people with serious heart conditions and circulatory problems when they climb the stairs. More difficult to spot in people with dark skin unless you know what to look for.
Walking through that door had catapulted me back to happy days in my teens; long before I found out where all my daft questions would take me. I didn’t know then what I know now. I had no idea or foresight about would happen over the years. No insight about the journey that would lead me to writing my next sentence.
Heat stress is the greatest problem facing mankind and a real threat to human survival on the planet.
