Jasper County Democrat, Volume 20, Number 17, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 May 1917 — FLYING JOB OF YOUNG MEN [ARTICLE]

FLYING JOB OF YOUNG MEN

Not Everyone of Proper Age Is Physically Fitted for Work—Airmen Face Many Perils. From leakage of petrol spray the pilot may become dizzy, and the exhaust gases from the engine—carbon monoxide and dioxide—may cause headache, drowsiness and malaise, says a writer in the Lancet, discussing diseases familiar to airmen/ The rarefied air at great elevations may induce the symptoms well known In balloonists, and Wells refers to a case t of frostbite in an airman who had been exposed to 34 degrees of frost at an elevation of' 15,000 feet. Psychasthenic symptoms —namely, 10£S of selfconfidence and the resulting mental worry (aerosthenia)—-are not uncommon, and prove that the victim has mistaken his sphere of activity-. ' Flying is undoubtedly the job of a young man under thirty years of age, and not every-young man is temperamentally or physically fitted to carry it through. Perfect eyesight is necessary to insure safe landing, correction with glasses being not without its dangers; perfect hearing is essential to detect the first indications of engine defect, and free movement of the joints of the lower limbs to control the steering gear. Fits and tendency to faint absolutely deter the aspirant from the air service. In one remarkable instance at Haslar an airman who fainted, with the result that the airplane dived nose downward 1,200 feet into a plowed field, escaped with such minor Injuries that he was at first extremely loath to give up this branch of the service.