MR. HARDY: The document has no jurat.
THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal will admit the document provisionally subject to the correct certificate being added later.
DR. STEINBAUER: I don't even want to read the whole document, only the first paragraph:
"I made the personal acquaintance of Univ. Prof. Dr. Wilhelm Beiglboeck of Vienna, at lectures given at scientific meetings. I have known his scientific works however, for a long time. He drew particular attention to himself through his excellent work as a pupil of the most prominent German internist, Prof, Eppinger. In particular, his research into the effects of various vitamins and into the pathology of the liver and epidemic Hepatitis has made a great impression. Prof. Beiglboeck is doubtless among the most promising research workers in the field of internal medicine. I know also, that Prof, Eppinger always spoke of him in terms of the highest regard."
Q Now, let's carry on; witness, what about your military service, how did that progress?
A In May of 1941 I was called up into the German Air Force as a Medical Soldier, and my basic training I passed in Baden near Vienna. In August of 1941 I became a non-commissioned officer, and I was sent to the air force hospital at Welz, Austria, and I was promoted, to noncommissioned officer corresponding to the rank of sergeant, and after serving in the air force hospital of Vienna for a short time I went to the war college at Eger in 1942 and then in August of the same year I left for a motorized company in Russia. I remained there until the end of 1943.
Q What duties did you have in Russia?
A I headed the internal ward of a field hospital.
Q Did you hold the position of a section doctor?
A From point of discipline, no, I was kept on the list as assistant to the surgeon.
Q And where did you go from Russia?
A. Subsequently I was transferred as an assistant to the internal department of the air force hospital at Brunswick, and from there in March of 1944 went to the war hospital at Taraviso, Italy.
Q So even in Brunswick you didn't become department medical officer?
A No.
Q And you didn't receive that title in spite of three years of service and although you were a university professor and already had been admitted for professorship?
A It was only in March 1944 I became an independent section medical officer fop the first time.
Q In the indictment you are described as an consultant medical officer of the air force though?
A I was never the consultant to the air force. Admittedly at the beginning cf 1944 I had been earmarked for that position in the Parachutist Army, but for reasons which Professor Dr. Sievers has described here a younger colleague of mine was preferred.
Q So you didn't participate in any meeting, particularly none of the meeting mentioned here in this trial, is that right?
A You mean the meetings, the congress of the assisting consultants?
Q Yes.
A You are right. I didn't participate in any one of these meetings.
Q Did you have any contact with your fellow defendants before this trial.
A I only knew Professor Handloser who during the years of 1938 and 1939 worked in Vienna where he was the military district medical officer, and I also knew him listening to lectures of his occasionally, but I do not believe he knew me, because he probably impressed me more as a general than I impressed him as a civilian. Of course I knew Professor Schroeder, Chief medical officer, by name.
He was my highest superior. The first time I saw him personally was when I was ordered to work on experiments and reported to the medical inspectorate. It was done by means of the common brief military report for duty. It was on that occasion I met Dr. Becker-Freyseng end later in October 1944, Dr. Schaefer. As the evidence has already shown I had a brief conference with Mr. Sievers in Dachau and I didn't know any other of my fellow defendants before.
Q Well, I think I can conclude the chapter regarding your character and personality, and in order to save trouble to the interpreters a number of testimonies and certificates have not yet been submitted by me. Now, let's pass on to the question of the order, when did you receive the order to carry out seawater experiments?
THE PRESIDENT: Counsel, before proceeding with that matter the Tribunal will be in recess.
(Thereupon a short recess was taken.)
THE MARSHAL: The Tribunal is again in session.
THE PRESIDENT: Counsel may proceed.
BY DR. STEINBAUER (Counsel for defendant Beiglboeck):
Q. Witness, we shall turn now to the second chapter, to the question of military orders. When did you receive the order to carry out sea water experiments?
A. Today I cannot give you the exact date when that order reached me. It must have been the middle or end of June, probably the end of June.
Q. At that time were you already told the purpose of this order?
A. No, the order came to my chief physician at Tarvisio, a teletype; this teletype told me to report immediately to the Medical Inspectorate in Berlin, There was no reason for this order in the teletype. I was sick at the time the telegram arrived. I thought at first that I would be called to get the position of a consulting internist, which had been promised me; however, since the rebuilding of my department in the Tarvisio hospital had just begun, I asked my chief physician to telephone to Berlin and if possible get permission for me to stay in the hospital in Tarvisio. Dr. Yaeger, my chief physician, then called Berlin. He was informed that I was not being transferred for the reasons I had thought but that I was to carry out scientific experiments for the commission from the Medical Inspectorate. I was to get precise details about this in Berlin. At any rate, I was to get under way immediately to get to Berlin and a few days later I went from Italy to Berlin and reported to the Medical Inspectorate, as I had been ordered, and there I was directed to see Dr. Becker-Freyseng.
Q. Whom you had not known theretofore?
A. Whom I had not known theretofore, neither personally nor by name.
Q. What did Dr. Becker-Freyseng tell you?
A. He told me briefly first of all what was afoot and then took me to Oberstarzt Dr. Merz from whom I received the formal order to take over the carrying out of these experiments.
Q. Did you accept this order without any opposition on your part immediately?
A. After I had been informed exactly what was going on there, I immediately asked permission to carry out the experiments in my department in Tarvisio. I wanted to carry them out on soldiers who would volunteer for them. I also said that I did not want to carry out experiments in a concentration camp and gave as my reasons for this, among other things, the fact that it seemed to me more practical to carry them out in an institute where the necessary laboratory facilities were available. Of course, I could not express very explicitly my personal opinions regarding concentration camps because in 1944 in Germany that was not something that one just did. I was told that the Medical Inspectorate had originally intended a hospital to be used for these experiments and I remember very exactly there was talk of Brunswick; I remember this for a personal reason. Not so long ago I had been working in Brunswick in the hospital and it would have pleased me greatly if in this way I should have had an opportunity to see my friends there again and consequently I much regretted that this plan was not carried out.
Q. For that reason was your proposal that the experiments be carried out in Tarvisio turned down?
A. The reason that Oberstarzt Dr. Merz gave me, that is the reason he expressed to me, was that the very aggravated situation on all fronts did not permit keeping soldiers in hospitals longer than was absolutely necessary for their convalescence. This was shortly after the beginning of the Anglo-American invasion. Be pointed out this fact to me specifically and mentioned also the Fuehrer order about which I had heard already, that very strict measures were to be applied in judging who was to stay in hospitals. For instance, we had to release from the hospital persons sick with gastric disorders even before they were healed.
We had people with gastric ulcers who were absolutely in need of hospital care. We had to take these people from the hospital and sent them to the so-called "stomach batallions." These were companies composed solely of persons with gastric ulcers who received a special diet but nevertheless did full active service.
For example, there was such a stomach company stationed near Tarvisio which in full active service combatting partisans and I remember very well that from this stomach company we frequently at the hospital received cases of gastric hemorrhage in the surgical department; wounded soldiers before they wore completely healed were put into the socalled convalescent companies.
We had difficulties again and again when we had hepatitis cases who kept relapsing when we released them because the liver again relapsed.
That, in general, was the situation. We did not act according to purely medical or scientific principles but acted simply on orders that were dictated by necessity. That was the actual situation in 1944 at the time I was given this order and for this reason I regarded this reason given to me by Oberstarzt Merz as a justified one.
Q.- Now, witness, did you say something else to escape from this assignment?
A.- When I realized that the location of the experiments could not be changed and since I did not want to go to that chosen location, I asked Becker-Freyseng to send me back to Tarvisio and to Commission my deputy in Tarvisio who was also an internist with the carrying out of these experiments. Becker-Freyseng answered that it was too late now to change anything. Professor Eppinger had recommended me as a suitable expert. Becker-Freyseng said that he had supposed this had been done with my permission. That, however, was not actually the case. Becker Freyseng said that he himself was not pleased that a concentration camp had been chosen as the location for the experiments. However, he was convinced that this problem of sea distress had to be solved because the many reports that he had received in the last time made it imperative to solve these problems.
He told me that I had been ordered to carry out the experiments. This was an order from higher up. It was just as binding on him as it was on me; and moreover, I had already been nominated to Himmler as the person who would conduct the experiments. Consequently, it would be impossible for me now to withdraw.
I then asked him whether I was to understand this as a strict military order and he answered "yes."
Now, in the year 1947 it is perhaps not quite so easy to understand that in the year 1944 it was absolutely necessary to regard a military order as binding, that one did so.
Q.- Then it was Professor Dr. Eppinger that proposed you?
A.- Yes, it was he.
Q.- Had you previously spoken about this matter with Eppinger?
A.- No. Regarding everything that happened before I arrived in Berlin I knew nothing whatsoever. Eppinger, as he told me later, had entered this whole affair or had attended this conference with the intention of carrying out the experiments at his clinic and for that reason he wanted one of his assistants to make the experiments. Since it was a military assignment and since I, as the only one of his older assistants, was a member of the Luftwaffe, he proposed me as the person to make the experiment.
Q.- Did. you, however, perhaps, later speak with Eppinger about this assignment?
A.- Between the time of my arrival in Berlin and the actual beginning of the experiments, I was once in Vienna and, of course, spoke with Eppinger regarding this question. I did nothing to conceal the fact that I was very unhappy to have received this assignment. My teacher told me that for the above mentioned reasons he had proposed me and, moreover, he said that he expected me to carry out these experiments out in a perfectly impeccable manner.
Moreover, he said it was neither his responsibility nor had it been his intention that I should be assigned to Dachau. He had neither proposed that nor had he been asked his opinion in that matter and, as a matter of fact, Dr. Eppinger had absolutely n thing to do with the choice of Dachau as the location of the experiments of of prisoners as the experimental subject.
Q.- What then had his intentions been?
A.- I have already said that Eppinger wanted to carry out the experiments at his clinic and had already agreed on that with Sirany and Berka before I went to Berlin.
DR. STEINBAUER: Mr. president, in this connection I should like to put in Document 12, page 26. This will be Exhibit No. 7. This is a letter from a then female doctor at the 1st Medical Clinic -- namely, Dr. Spiess. I shall read the second paragraph from this:
"As assistant of the 1st Medical University Clinic in Vienna, I had the opportunity of attending to a part of the report of Dr. Beiglboeck on his work at Dachau submitted to Prof. Dr. Eppinger. On the occasion of this conversation. Professor Dr. Beiglboeck generally condemned the principle of the performance of scientific experiments in concentration camps most strongly and at the same time reproached his chief, Prof. Dr. Eppinger, for selecting him for his work. Thereupon Prof. Dr. Eppinger assorted that he had not nominated him.
"Some months later, long after the termination of the experiments at Dachau, he frequently talked in my presence about the experiments at Dachau to German and foreign physicians and nurses. Upon my remark that these experiments surely were Wehrmacht experiments and therefore "secret," they were not intended for everyone's ears, Prof. Dr. Eppinger replied one could frankly speak about them as no case of death has occurred with the seawater experiments and also that no experimental person had suffered any serious consequences through the experiment so that there was no reason to make a secret of it."
BY DR. STEINBAUER:
Q.- witness, it seems to me I detect a slight contradiction here. The doctor who wrote this letter states that Eppinger had not nominated you but you just said that he did.
A.- I think there is a misunderstanding here. When I objected to receiving this assignment, Eppinger said to me literally, "It is not my fault that you have been assigned to Dachau." Now, apparently, Dr. Spiess' emphasis should fall on the word "you." However, the emphasis of whar Dr. Eppinger said should lie on the word "Dachau."
Q.- Now, did you accept this assignment without making further efforts or did you make other efforts to escape from it?
A.- As a last attempt I mobilized my chief physician in Tarvisio and asked him to request my return. I hoped that such a request through army channels would lead to my return to Tarvisio. As Dr. Jaeger has testified here, he did so. However, he had no success.
Q.- Now, in the cross examination Mr. Hardy will certainly say to you;
"Sure, you didn't want to go to Dachau because you considered the experiments unnecessary at all." Is that the motive for your attitude.
A.- As I gradually became more and more experienced in the question of sea water experimentation, I came to think that the experiments were not unnecessary.
Dr. Becker-Freyseng, on the basis of various observations and experience on the part of the German air force and navy, informed me of the urgency of the sea water problem and pointed out the unfortunate fact to me that precisely in the problem of allaying thirst we had Schaeffer's preparation but the introduction of this preparation was apparently going to run into insurmountable difficulties, Therefore, if we didn't succeed in introducing this preparation, we had to know what sort of advice we would give a person who found himself in a state of sea emergency and under these circumstances I considered it my duty to work on these experiments, if I were ordered to do so; I not only considered it a military duty which I had to fulfill anyway but it was also the kind of a question which concerned me as a physician. At that time I had not been informed about the foregoing events of this affair, or at any rate was informed of it only very superficially and I knew nothing about the intrigues of the technical office as they have been described here. I knew nothing at that time and from my point of view I saw the matter as follows: Both Becker-Freyseng and particularly Professor Eppinger told me that we could assume that the Schaeffer method would not be introduced under any circumstances because the technical office declared it was impossible for reasons of lack of raw material. However, if the Schaeffer method could not be introduced, then the question still remained open: is it better for a person in sea distress to drink nothing at all or should he drink sea water and if he drinks sea water is it expedient to give him the Berka prepara tion? Regarding the question of the effects of sea water there had been up to that time no systematic scientific investigations carried out. In the meantime such investigations have been carried out and the results became known, but, of course, a problem that is solved in 1947 cannot be viewed as of the year 1944, in the same way that you might reproach Hippocrates with not being familiar with modern brain surgery, and it is quite understandable why from the medical point of view this problem had been greatly neglected, because in times of peace there really was no problem of sea distress anymore.
The great liners had solved their drinking water problems but the war, both naval and air, suddenly made this problem a very burning one, not only for the German Wehrmacht was it a pressing problem. That can be seen from the fact that at precisely the same time when we were concerning ourselves with this problem, i.e., at the time when I received the order to work on the problem, experiments in that direction were being carried out in America, and it is a great tragedy that we learned with this work too late. If it was intended to decide whether the consumption of sea water was good or bad and whether it is good or bad to add some dextrose preparation to it, then this problem had to be solved on the basis of human experiments. There was no other way to decide it.
Q. I read through the indictment yesterday and the question occurred to me, couldn't you have contented yourself with animal experiments alone?
A. I think I can state that very briefly because Professor Vollhardt has already explained the essential matters concerned here. There is no laboratory experimented animal whose sodium chloride metabolism and water metabolism can be compared with the human. Herbiverous animals react to salt much differently than carnivorous animals, or an animal like the horse which perspires a great deal contrary to the dog which does not sweat, and how specifically a cat reacts. So far as I know, there have been no very exhaustive experiments to investigate this matter but I should have been only too glad to buy experimental animals for this purpose in order to escape from that assignment. The essential reason was that the human being is the only living being which uses salt not only as food but also uses it as spice, and for this reason the human being is adapted to the consumption of quite different quantities of salt than are any animals. I later saw that American scientists when they completed their studies on sea water performing animal experiments that they explicitly noted that with dogs they had to use not a three percent but a five percent salt solution in order to get approxi mately the same reaction as a human being would have.
Q Mr. President, in order to corroborate what the defendant has just said I wish to put in a document which will be Exhibit 8. This is on page 71 of Document Book I and this is Document 20. This is an extract from the Vienna Medical Weekly of 1944/1946 regarding physiological effects of the drinking of undiluted sea water. I shall read only one sentence from this document, the fourth line - "It was necessary to give dogs a 5% sodium chloride solution instead of a 3.5% one, in order to establish an experimental situation analogous to that of man."
However, weren't these experiments carried out in this way in order to accord with scientific regulations?
A The problems of the water and salt metabolism, of course, bring up many problems. So far as sea water was concerned I knew of no writings on undiluted sea water. The first papers that I saw there, which I later realized to be the first in this field, were those of Dr. Schaefer which were given to me. From them I could see that Dr. Schaefer had done all the preliminary work on this subject but I could also see that Dr. Schaefer, that the knowledge that he had derived from his experiments were not relevant in any way for human beings because, for instance, Schaefer discovered that rabbits fed with barley oats can live for an enormously long length of time in spite that they are drinking sea water. He gave them daily doses of sea water which for human beings would have amounted to 1/2 to 2 meters. Nevertheless these rabbits lived for weeks and weeks. In other words those results cannot be transferred to human beings.
Q Did other scientists, especially those outside Germany, also report on animal experiments in this field?
A I think I have already said that I had found no reports at all on such experiments. The only experiment in sea water that was accessible to us in Germany in medical literature up to that time was an English experiment on human beings. The publications I came to know of later from England and America were also papers on experiments with human beings.
And that is understandable for the reasons I have just given.
Q Did you yourself have anything to do in deciding whether human being experiments were to be used and were you asked about your opinions on this matter?
A I have already said, and in the interrogation examinations of Professor Schroeder, Becker-Freyseng, and Schaefer, it has become clear here, that I had nothing to do with the preparation for these experiments. Neither the decision to carry out experiments nor the way they were to be carried out were taken up in my presence. In the conference of 25 May in which the way the experiments were to be carried out was agreed upon, I was not present. After I arrived in Berlin I was given the plan for the experiments which had been worked out in every detail. I was instructed at that time to abide closely to this program and I was also told that this program had been worked out at a conference of leading specialists and that Eppinger and Heubner had been among those who worked it out.
Q In other words you yourself could affect no changes in this experimental program, could you?
A No, moreover in this conference of 25 May it was also decided that my experiments were to be chocked on the spot later and I believe this shows most clearly my connection to the experimental program.
Q Then the main problem was - is the Berka preparation able to reduce the damage done to the human system by seawater?
A Yes. And from the whole situation at that time the Berka preparation had become the bone of contention. To be sure, as I have already indicated, that was not the only problem that had to be solved. Becker-Freyseng told me that Dr. Sirany in Vienna had experimented on soldiers, but in these experiments he left it to the discretion of the experimental subjects to decide how much sea water they would consume. In this way he collected what I can only characterize as total confusion of results because one man drank 100 cc and the other 2 liters, and the third drank as much as he wanted to.
One man drank such and such amount one day and either more or less on the next. In short, this was the experimental program of a man who perhaps was a good dermatologist but certainly not a specialist in the field of metabolism. Sirnay overlooked in his results some very elementary and primary thing, and unfortunately he made an even more unpardonable error, namely he did not find out how sea water works alone and connected everything he observed to the use of the Berka method. If he had not overlooked the most primary necessity of having a control group I know for certain no man would be indicted for having carried on sea water experiments because then the tragic error would not have occurred which in the last consequence set the whole avalanche in motion. Berka went to Eppinger with Sirany's experiments and told him that Sirany's experiments had proven that finally sea water is potable and secondly that it is much less injurious than otherwise. Bertha, like many charlatans had unfortunately certain suggestive influence on his environment, and I believe that to some extent Eppinger fell under this influence. When I visited Vienna I discussed this whole problem with Professor Eppinger in all details and I asked him for what reasons he was recommencing this preparation at all because chemically the Berka preparation cannot change sea water at all. That was pellucidly clear and Schaefer who was a chemist and fortunately approached this problem only from a chemical point of view was perfectly right, of course in repudiating the Berka method 100%.
In Eppinger's case the situation was somewhat different. Eppinger had heard constantly from both Sirany and Berka and it had been confirmed in Berlin that Schaefer's excellent process would, under no circumstances be introduced. Eppinger, of course, was no ass who said to himself "if I have a chemical desalinating method on the basis of the Schaefer procedure then that would be worse than my putting a little sugar into the water." Eppinger always told mo personally, of course, the Schaefer method is head and shoulders above this other method. There can be no discussion about that whatsoever. The only thing that could be discussed now was that if the Schaefer method was not introduced the question remained open, as the Berka preparation was not in a position to give at least slight advantages. And now the tragedy of which I spoke previously comes to light, because Sirany did not have any control group that drank only sea water, in other words didn't do what the Prosecutor was so outraged about before, namely as he did not give pure sea water, for this reason there was no basis for comparison. Now, Eppinger saw in Sirany's records of the experiments that one of the experimental subjects Reached a concentration of salt in the urine as high as 3 per cent. Sea water has about 2.7% of salt. If the kidneys can accomodate this concentration then about 4 or 5 ccs of water must be added from the body daily. But experimental persons, however, must give much more water than that because it is absolutely necessary for him to secrete urine, and in order to combat thirst, and it is by drinking more that you do combat thirst. Now, literature has always asserted, and this can be seen from all textbooks, that the maximum salt concentration in the kidneys is 2 per cent. Eppinger relied on those statements, and consequently he can be pardoned for making the error of construing the higher concentration of salt in the urine as a consequence of the Bertha preparation. Since Berkatit contains vitamin C and citrate acid, and since it is known that vitamin C has an effect on the kidneys and there are many papers on that subject, so Eppinger thought that it was impossible that Berkatit was having such an effect on the kidneys.
It wasn't as if Eppinger was tormented by a vast curiosity, or rather it was not as if Eppinger was tormented by an enormous curiosity, but because of this curiosity wanted to push 45 concentration camp inmates into an experiment. It was that Eppinger was asked his opinion and he based his opinion on different presuppositions than that appear today, namely on the presupposition that the Schaefer method could not be introduced because of raw material shortages, and from the purely medical point of view he could not shoulder the responsibility not to take this possibility into consideration, this problem which had to come to his attention by Sirany's experiments. If he had found this suspicion confirmed, then this effect that he thought the Berka method had, would have prolonged the life of persons who had suffered shipwreck for a few days. This is the sort of thing that is characteristic for a clinician and not for a chemist. And if Sirany had not made this mistake in conducting his experiments then also the clinician would not have fallen victim to this error, but then that Eppinger was not entirely wrong was proved in my experiments, namely that the addition of vitamins does actually slightly increase the concentration of salt in the urine. That is perhaps quite interesting from the theoretical point of view, but the increase in concentration was so slight that it was unimportant from the practical point of view. This was the reason why Professor Eppinger and Dr. Schaefer were talking two different languages in this conference. One was speaking as a chemist and the other as a clinician.
Q Witness, do you on the basis of your previous opinion accustom yourself to this idea?
A I must say that I personally didn't have confidence in the Berka method, but of course as my teacher whose knowledge in the field of metabolism I have known and respected for 14 years admitted such a possibility then I had to be of the opinion that his possibility did exist.
Q Witness, did you have any opportunity of speaking yourself with tho so often mentioned engineer Berka?
A When I was in Vienna I did have an opportunity to make Berka's personal acquaintance. I saw him then for the first time and discussed his discoveries with him. Now, a document has been put in evidence here which shows that Berka was of the opinion that his dextrous solution passed the salt through the body. Just what ho, as a technical chemist, imagined under this term "passed it through the body" I don't know, but he was convinced, and this is hard to understand in a chemist, that apparently under the influence of these fluid acids some complex compound took place between the sugar and the salt. I also saw his laboratory in Vienna and he had started a whole series of experiments in order to track his favorite idea down. He had also taken this idea about this compound to other chemists and had had them give him expert opinions, which he showed to Professor Eppinger. One of these expert opinions affirmed the possibility of the formation of this compound. The man who gave this opinion was a chemist of very considerable reputation. I think there was a case of mixed crystallization. I immediately asked Berka whether his compound was soluble in water and that of course he had to confirm, and then I said for us from the medical point of view that is the only important point. If you cannot make this salt insoluble then there can be no question of anything being passed through the body, but I was speaking to deaf oars. Berka was particularly obsessed with his idea, and I believe I can express tho suspicion that even today he still considers his method better than Schaefer's. My effort to persuade him to withdraw his method from competition, so to speak, was unfortunately in vain. If he had done so, a great many of these experiments would have become unnecessary.
Q. Then you were not convinced that the experiments were unnecessary in themselves?
A. I can only deny this question. What struck me as the most important aspect of the experiments was the clarification of the problem, that had not been clarified experimentally; namely, whether thirst is better or sea water is better, and how big sea-water doses have to be. As I wish to emphasize again in 1944, even the great sea faring nations had no clear knowledge regarding the effect of drinking sea water. I personally, however, was of a different opinion, if one has developed preparations which can prevent soldiers from being injured, then it is both irresponsible and incomprehensible to concern oneself at all with the worse preparation. In my own opinion the technical office was under the obligation to remove all the difficulties in order to introduce the Schaefer method. If there was talk of sabotage when these efforts were being made, then I want to say that the real sabotage was committed against humanity and health by the attitude adopted by the technical office; if that attitude had not existed then we could have dispensed with at least half or at least two thirds of the experiments and could have started a short experimental series which would have been better from every point of view, also from the scientific point of view as the success of such experiments had to be doubted from the very beginning, because thirst experiments with so many persons cannot be so closely supervised, under whatever circumstances the experiments are conducted, so that the inevitable experimental mistakes occur. And it is decisive that such errors arc to be expected in so many such experimentations. Because of the expectation of this sort of errors, the number of experimental persons was made larger from the beginning.
I recall very well that Becker-Freyseng toll me at that time we want t use so many people because in the conference of the 25th of May, one of the scientists, I do not know who it was, drew my attention to the fact that a large number of experimental subjects would confuse the experiments by drinking fresh water.
Q. Now, Professor, when you received this assignment with -- the precise instructions how to carry out the experiments, did you start on them immediately or did you have to wait a while?
A. I could not begin immediately but I stayed, I think for three weeks, in Berlin.
A. Now, what did you do in those three weeks, take walks?
A. I used this time to concern myself with the questions that w aid come up in judging such experiments. I did this by reading literature on the subject. I had already previously concerned myself very much with the problem of water and salt metabolism. I had to work to a groat extent for this information, and since sea water consists of salt and water, those are the two fundamental tilings one must know. But, of course, I did not wish to reproach myself for having overlooked something that was already generally known, and consequently I went to the libraries in Berlin and read through a very great amount of German and foreign literature on eke subject. I sat there and took notes on everything that was known on the subject at that time, and I do not believe that I overlooked anything that was accessible to us at chat time.
Q. Witness, did you write words of your own, that concern themselves with this problem or at least this general problem, if not with the specific sea water problem?