William J Schull

The Aymara: Strategies in Human Adaptation to a Rigorous Environment - Studies in Human Biology William J Schull 1990 edition

Marc Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 219-242) and index. Table of Contents: 1: Introduction: The place and the study.- 2: Flora and fauna.- 3: Trace metals.- 4: The Aymara: An outline of their pre and post-Columbian history.- 5: Paleopathology.- 6: Nutritional characteristics of the Aymara of northern Chile.- 7: The Chilean Aymara and their reproductive patterns.- 8: Ecologic determinants of the health of Aymara children.- 9: Disease and disability among the Aymara.- 10: Heterozygosity and physical growth in an Andean population.- 11: Hearing and hypoxia among the Aymara.- 12: Altitude and cardiopulmonary relationships.- 13: Oral characteristics of the Aymara.- 14: Intratribal genetic differentiation as assessed through electrophoresis.- 15: Ethnogenesis and affinities to other South American aboriginal populations.- 16: Epilogue.- References.- Multinational Andean Genetic and Health Program Publications."Publisher Marketing: South America's Andean highlands have seen the rise and decline of several impressive, indigenous civilizations. Separated somewhat in time and place, each developed its distinctive socio-cultural accouterments but all shared a need to adjust to the individual, societal and environmental limitations imposed by life at high altitude. Partial oxygen pressure, temperature and humidity fall systematically as altitude rises, but there are other changes as well. Darwin, Forbes, von Humboldt, von Tschudi and other naturalists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries who weaved their way through South America commented repeatedly on the tolerance or apparent indifference of the indigenes to the rigors of life at altitudes above 3000 meters but its impact upon lowlanders. Von Tschudi (1847), for example, observed 'in the cordillera the effect of the diminished atmospheric pressure on the human frame shows itself in intolerable symptoms of weariness and an extreme difficulty of breathing . . . . The first symptoms are usually felt at the elevation of 12,600 feet (3800 m) above the sea. These symptoms are vertigo, dimness of sight and hearing, pains in the head and nausea . . . . Inhabitants of the coast and Europeans, who for the first time visit the lofty regions of the cordillera, are usually attacked with this disorder. ' But von Tschudi's description of acute mountain sickness was hardly the first; his Spanish predecessors had known and commented upon it too.

Contributor Bio:  Schull, William J WILLIAM J. SCHULL, PhD, is currently Director of the Human Genetics Center at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, where he has been the Ashbel Smith Professor of Academic Medicine since 1984. After receiving his doctorate in genetics from Ohio State University, Dr. Schull went to Japan at the age of 27 to head the Department of Genetics for the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission. Over the years, his work with the ABCC led to his involvement in a number of critical related studies, including the Child Health Survey at Nagasaki in 1960 and the Hirado Health Survey in 1964; he was also an integral member of the Radiation Effects Research Foundation of Hiroshima, where he served as Vice Chairman and Director. Dr. Schull is recognized around the world as one of the foremost authorities on the biological effects of radiation. He has been an advisor to the Atomic Energy Commission and the Department of Energy in the United States, and the Atomic Energy Control Board of Canada. He has also advised two panels of the World Health Organization? one researching radiation and human heredity, the other investigating prenatal exposure to the nuclear accident at Chernobyl. In 1970, Dr. Schull was presented with the ABCC's Commemorative Award for his long-standing service and in 1992, was received into the Order of the Sacred Treasure by the Emperor of Japan.