Christian Bohr and the Seven Little Devils

The author explores novel lessons emerging from the oxygen diffusion controversy between Christian Bohr on one side and August and Marie Krogh on the other. THe controversy found its emphatic expression in August and Marie Krogh's "Seven Little Devils", a series of papers published back-to-back in the 1910 volume of Skandinavisches Archiv fur Physiologie. The Devils unjustifiably sealed the fate of Christian Bohr's theory of active cellular participation in the transport of oxygen from the lungs to the pulmonary circulation. The author's renewed examination of the original papers of Bohr and the Kroghs reveals that Bohr's concept of active cellular participation in diffusion is entirely compatible with the mechanism of capillary recruitment, for the discovery of which Krogh was later awarded Nobel's Prize, years after Bohr's untimely and unexpected death in 1911.