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| most of Canada's major hospitals today there is futuristic-looking equipment capable of bringing patients' temperatures down toward that of a hibernating groundhog. So far the groundhog and similar hibernating animals have some secret we have been unable to learn for they can safely lower their temperature much further than we can, But we are learning more about hiberna- tion every day and realizing it represents a vital discovery to mankind, We must know the secret of it entirely because it can make surgery so much safer and because it may help us in space travel, So important is hibernation that dozens of centres across the world (an unknown number behind the Iron Curtain) are working on it, This fall the U.S, Office of Naval Research called an international conference in Wash- ington on the subject, Few Canadians realize that the furore really started in Canada with a Toronto group of medical and zoological researchers, They were aided by the National Research Council 'in Ottawa, which is still working with the Toronto group on the subject, LREADY the burgeoning research has paid off. After a Toronto announcement some 10 years ago by Dr, William G. Bigelow and his colleagues that they had been able to "deep- freeze" dogs, stop their hearts and later safely restart them ----- researchers the world over jumped on the bandwagon, Normally, a heart can be stopped safely for enly about four or five minutes, It is needed to pump blood which contains oxygen and nutriment for all the cells of the body. If the heart stops the cells quickly die, But, as Dr, Bigelow pointed out, if the body is cold the Surgeons want the groundhog's secrets, cells ourn very little food, So they can get along without an exchange of blood for longer periods, Simple? Maybe, but the techniques by which. body temperatures can be safely lowered were difficult to devise. A human being isnt a hibernating animal. His body contains a "ther- mostat" that keeps it at 98.6 degrees Fahren- heit, If the weather is cold the body burns more fuel( food) to keep warm; in hot weather sweat evaporates to cool the body down, If temperature rises more than a degree or so a person is sick with a fever, If body temperature begins falling a person loses consciousness; and if it falls more than about 10 degrees his heart will usually fail and he will die, With hibernating animals this heart failure doesn't happen, The grounddog hibernates all winter with his body temperature only a little above freezing (32 degrees Fahrenheit), So does the dormouse, the duck-billed platypus in Australia, and a peculiar bird called the poor- will in Western North America. INCE great interest began to centre on hibernation experts have learned more about it. They have proved, for instance, that bears do not hibernate, Only a year ago the Depart-: SH Dr. W. C. Bigelow. 'ment of Lands and Forests of Ontario produced a booklet on animals which said that bears were hibernators, But in point of fact bears remain warm all winter and actually have their young in winter -- an impossibility in a real hibernator, The University of Toronto's Zoology Depart- ment has carried out very extensive studies on hibernation and a groundhog farm was even set up in southern Ontario to raise groundhogs for 'research, It is believed now that hibernating animals have some mysterious hibernating chemical locked up in a substance called "brown fat" 'which is found in their bodies, Studies have been made of this at the National Research Council and it is now hoped that extracts wil] enable non-hibernating animals to hibernate, Just how important are these studies to the future of mankind? Well, in 10 years, the limited success that has been achieved in cooling patients for surgery has already revolutionized some forms of heal ing. So far, surgeons only cool patients a few 'degrees. This, nonetheless, enables hearts to be stopped for upwards of an hour (more in the case of children) while the heart is operated upon, When artificial-heart-lung machines are' used greater safety is assured by cooling the patient, Brain operations are safer with the technique too, Brain cells are particularly liable to damage if they do not get enough oxygen, so if surgery is to be performed which might cut off the blood supply hypothermia (from hypo meaning "low" and therm meaning temperature) can be helpful, T the Hospital for sick Children youngsters with head injuries who once would have died are now being saved by cooling. When injured the brain tends to swell, Cooling the body acts like a cold compress, limiting the brain swelling and saving life, Every day new operations come forward in which hypothermia plays a part. But some experts, like those of the U.S. Navy see an even more dramatic role for hiber- nation techinques, In a report released. at their recent symposium it was pointed out that astronauts in a state of hibernation might live "up to 20 times longer than normally -- maybe 1400 years! -- long enough to reach distant planets of other solar systems, 4 Sr LER Re. & a