NOTA SULLA NON LINEARITÀ DEL SISTEMA RESPIRATORIO: COME L’EMOGLOBINA LEGA GASTON TISSANDIER A REINHOLD MESSNER

This article starts from an aeronautical tragedy to track briefly the history of the oxygen equilibrium curve and the creation of Hill’s model of it. After having argued that the characteristics of such a curve determine the non-linear behaviour of the respiratory system, I discussed some functional consequences of this behaviour, which explain how it happened that Reinhold Messner succeeded in the extraordinary enterprise of climbing Mount Everest without supplementary oxygen.