More RIpH-Reply

In Reply. —The ghost of the "Great Trans-atlantic Acid Base Debate" 1 roams again. Imagine my delight in being found in JAMA 2 sandwiched between founders of acid-base physical chemistry: "In the days of Arrhenius, Severinghaus, and Henderson-Hasselbalch..." in Neiberger's letter. Henderson and Hasselbalch, the first transatlantic acid-base nomenclatura, never met to consummate their hyphen. 3 At Harvard, Lawrence J. Henderson applied the mass action law to the CO 2 HCO 3 relationship (1907), while 10 years later, the Dane Karl Albert Hasselbalch wrote it in the logarithmic form (1917). Svante Arrhenius demonstrated ionization in a nearly disapproved thesis at Uppsala, Sweden, in 1884, which won him the Nobel Prize in 1903. 4 Good company, both in age and distinction! Why not switch from pH to H + , as Neiberger suggests? The H + activity , which is what is measured by a pH electrode, approximates the H + ion concentration, but in no