万物简史 第341期:孤独的行星(6)

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　　the bubbles sprang instantly to fizziness, memorably¹ enlivening the digestive process. 气泡立刻泛起泡沫，恢复了大家的食欲。

　　Apart from avoiding high-pressure environments altogether, only two strategies are reliably successful against the bends. 除了避免高压环境以外，有两种办法可以万无一失地防止减压病。

　　The first is to suffer only a very short exposure to the changes in pressure. 一种是仅仅短时间接触气压变化。

　　That is why the free divers² I mentioned earlier can descend³ to depths of five hundred feet without ill effect. 因此，我上面提到的裸潜者可以钻到150米的深处而又不会有不舒服的感觉。

　　They don't stay under long enough for the nitrogen in their system to dissolve into their tissues. 他们在下面逗留的时间不长，体内的氮还来不及溶解到组织里。

　　The other solution is to ascend⁴ by careful stages. 另一种办法是小心地、逐步地回到水面，

　　This allows the little bubbles of nitrogen to dissipate harmlessly. 这么做就使得小小的氮气泡散逸，不造成伤害。

　　A great deal of what we know about surviving at extremes is owed to the extraordinary father-and-son team of John Scott and J. B. S. Haldane. 很大程度上多亏了一个杰出的父子小组，我们现在很懂得如何在极端的环境里生存下去。他们是约翰·斯科特·霍尔丹和J.B.S.霍尔丹。

　　Even by the demanding standards of British intellectuals, the Haldanes were outstandingly eccentric. 即使按照英国知识界很严格的标准来说，霍尔丹父子也是极其古怪的。

　　The senior Haldane was born in 1860 to an aristocratic Scottish family (his brother was Viscount Haldane) 老霍尔丹1860年生于苏格兰一个贵族家庭（他的哥哥是霍尔丹子爵），

　　but spent most of his career in comparative modesty⁵ as a professor of physiology⁶ at Oxford⁷.  但他的一生的大部分时间在牛津大学担任生理学教授，过得比较检束。

　　He was famously absent-minded. 他精力不集中是有名的。

　　Once after his wife had sent him upstairs to change for a dinner party he failed to return and was discovered asleep in bed in his pajamas⁸. 有一次，他的妻子打发他去楼上换衣服准备出席一个晚宴，怎么也不见他下来，结果发现他穿着睡衣躺在床上睡着了。

　　When roused, Haldane explained that he had found himself disrobing and assumed it was bedtime. 被唤醒以后，霍尔丹解释说，他发现自己在脱衣服，以为到了睡觉时间。

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