Albert Richard Behnke Jr., MD | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Nickname | McGinty[1] |
| Born | (1903-08-08)August 8, 1903 |
| Died | January 16, 1992(1992-01-16) (aged 88) |
| Allegiance |  United States of America |
| Branch | United States Navy |
| Years of service | 1929–1959 |
| Rank | Captain |
| Awards | Navy and Marine Corps Medal |
CaptainAlbert Richard Behnke Jr.USN (ret.) (August 8, 1903 – January 16, 1992) was an Americanphysician, who was principally responsible for developing the U.S. Naval Medical Research Institute.[2] Behnke separated the symptoms ofArterial Gas Embolism (AGE) from those ofdecompression sickness and suggested the use ofoxygen inrecompression therapy.[3][4]
Behnke is also known as the "modern-day father" of humanbody composition for his work in developing thehydrodensitometry method of measuring body density, his standard man and woman models as well as a somatogram based onanthropometric measurements.[5]
Behnke was born August 8, 1903, inChicago, Illinois.[1] He moved toNew Mexico and settled inWhittier, California, by 1912.[1] Behnke graduated fromWhittier College in 1925 and moved toSan Francisco to attend medical school atStanford University.[1] Stanford Medical School required a one-year internship prior to conferring amedical doctorate.[1] Behnke joined theUnited States Navy and completed his internship at theMare Island Naval Hospital in 1930.[1] In 1932, the Navy sent Behnke to theHarvard School of Public Health.[1]
Following medical school in 1930, Behnke found his lifelong interest indeep sea diving when he was assigned as an assistant medical officer toUSS Holland andSubmarine Division Twenty inSan Diego under the command ofChester W. Nimitz.[1] In addition to his other duties, Behnke spent time covering medical watch onUSS Ortolan, asubmarine rescue ship, where he performed his firsthard hat dive.[1]
In 1932 Behnke wrote a letter to theSurgeon General that was published in theUnited States Naval Medical Bulletin outlining the possible causes ofarterial gas embolisms he was seeing related to submarine escape training.[1] This separated the symptoms of arterial gas embolism (AGE) from those ofdecompression sickness.[3] This letter caught the attention of the director of the submarine medicine in theBureau of Medicine, Captain E.W. Brown.[1] Brown sent Behnke to dopostgraduate work at the Harvard School of Public Health and research on diving and submarine medicine with fellow studentCharles W. Shilling.[1]Philip Drinker asked Behnke to stay for two additional years and the Navy allowed it.[citation needed]
Lieutenant junior grade Behnke was then sent toPearl Harbor in 1935 to theSubmarine Escape Training Tower. Later that year, Behnkeet al. experimented with oxygen for recompression therapy.[4] Evidence of the effectiveness of recompression therapy utilizing oxygen was later shown by Yarbrough and Behnke and has since become the standard of care for treatment of DCS.[6][7]
Behnke also began to outline his idea for a medical laboratory in 1936.[1] That outline would eventually become the Naval Medical Research Institute (NMRI) now located with theNational Naval Medical Center. In 1937, Behnke introduced the “no-stop”decompression tables.[3][8]
After being transferred toWashington, D.C., in 1938, Behnke was assigned to medical duty at theExperimental Diving Unit (NEDU).[1]
The submarine USSSqualus sank in 1939 and Behnke responded with fellow NEDU personnelCommandersCharles Momsen andAllan McCann, Yarbrough and Wilmon, and master diverJames McDonald with more divers.[9] They met Shilling on site to begin work.[9] Divers from the submarine rescue shipFalcon, under the direction of the salvage and rescue expert Momsen, employed the newRescue Chamber he had invented years earlier but which the US Navy command had repeatedly blocked.[9] They were able to rescue all 33 surviving crew members from the sunken submarine including futureRear AdmiralOliver F. Naquin.[9] The salvage divers used recently developedheliox diving schedules and successfully avoided thecognitive impairment symptoms associated with suchdeep dives, thereby confirming Behnke's theory ofnitrogen narcosis.[3]
Later in 1939, Behnke and Yarborough demonstrated that gases other than nitrogen also could cause narcosis.[10] From his results, he deduced thatxenon gas could serve as ananesthetic, even under normobaric conditions but was too scarce to allow for confirmation. Although Lazharev, in Russia, apparently studied xenonanesthesia in 1941, the first published report confirming xenon anesthesia was in 1946 by J. H. Lawrence, who experimented on mice. Xenon was first used as a surgical anesthetic in 1951 by Stuart C. Cullen, who successfully operated on two patients.[11]
Taking advantage of the positive public support for Navy diving following theSqualus rescue, Behnke contactedFranklin D. Roosevelt and with Presidential interest known, received approval for the construction of his research laboratory (NMRI).[1]
On December 7, 1941, when theattack on Pearl Harbor began, Behnke was at sea onUSS Lexington and immediately reassigned to medical posts aroundHawaii.[1]
Behnke returned to Washington and soon opened NMRI as the "research executive" in October 1942.[1] Behnke focused his interest in how physical fitness and fat content effects inert gas elimination and started projects to evaluate this relationship. His research lead us to consider him the "modern-day father" of human body composition for "his pioneering studies of hydrostatic weighing in 1942, the development of a reference man and woman model, and somatogram based on anthropometric measurements underlie much current work in body composition assessment"[5][12]
In 1942 Behnke made the first proposal for operational saturation diving and its economic benefit pertaining to work in caissons and pressurized tunnels.[13]
When the people ofOccupied Germany were suffering from starvation, Behnke focused his attention to increasing their food ration.[1]
Behnke remained at NMRI until 1950 when he was transferred to his final assignment at the Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory (NRDL) at theSan Francisco Naval Shipyard.[1] His work on physical fitness andbody habitus continued in projects surroundingradiological shelters anddecontamination.[14]
In 1950, Behnke earned theNavy and Marine Corps Medal "for saving the life of a civilian skin diver who surfaced too quickly off Monterey. Behnke, then a Navy captain, spent two days in a decompression chamber with the man."[15][16]
Upon retiring from the Navy in 1959, Behnke turned over command of the NRDL to Captain Harry S. Etter.[15]
Upon his retirement from the Navy in 1959, Behnke became a professor ofpreventive medicine at theUniversity of California and Director of the Institute of Applied Biology, Presbyterian Medical Center, San Francisco, California.[1]
Behnke served on the first Board of Advisors for theNational Association of Underwater Instructors and taught medical aspects of diving at their first Instructor Candidate Course that started on August 26, 1960, in Houston, TX.[17]
The bends prevention and safety program for crews working in undergroundcaissons to build theBay Area Rapid Transit system was designed by Behnke in 1964.[16][18]
Behnke with several other researchers founded the Undersea Medical Society (now theUndersea and Hyperbaric Medical Society) in 1967.[citation needed]
The term "oxygen window" was first used by Behnke in 1967.[19] Behnke refers to early work by Momsen on "partial pressure vacancy" (PPV)[20] where he used partial pressures of O2 and He as high as 2-3ATA to create a maximal PPV.[21] Behnke then goes on to describe "isobaric inert gas transport" or "inherent unsaturation" as termed by LeMessurier and Hills,[22] and separately by Hills,[23][24][25] who made their independent observations at the same time. Van Liewet al. also made a similar observation that they did not name at the time.[26] The clinical significance of their work was later shown by Sass.[27]
In 1975, Behnke was involved with experiments on cosmicparticle radiation for theApollo program.[28]
Starting in 1969, the Behnke award has been given annually by theUndersea and Hyperbaric Medical Society, Inc. to a scientist for outstanding scientific contributions to advances in undersea biomedical activity. The award carries an honorarium and a plaque. The first recipient was Behnke.[1]
Established in 1916 and awarded by the Association of Military Surgeons of the United States, the SirHenry S. Wellcome Medal and Prize is awarded annually for "the research work most valuable for the military service performed in any branch of medicine, surgery, or sanitation". Behnke was the 1941 recipient.[29]
Behnke received theAmerican College of Sports Medicine's Honor Award in 1976.[5][30]
In 1977, Behnke was awarded an honorary Doctor of Science (Sc.D.) degree fromWhittier College.[31]
The Navy dedicated the NMRI Hyperbaric Research Facility on July 1, 1981, to Behnke.[2]
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