Journal of Applied Physiology, Vol 57, Issue 2 293-303, Copyright © 1984 by American Physiological Society
August and Marie Krogh and respiratory physiology
B. Schmidt-Nielsen
August and Marie Krogh first met in 1904 in the laboratory of Christian
Bohr, a well-known Danish physiologist, where August was a teaching
assistant and Marie Jorgensen a medical student. August, the oldest son of
a brewer in Grenaa, Denmark, had recently obtained his doctorate for his
work on respiration in frogs. Marie Jorgensen, the daughter of a farmer in
Fyn, had at the age of six decided to pursue a medical career. August and
Marie were married in 1905, and she joined him in some of his research.
Christian Bohr was a staunch proponent of the theory that O2 was secreted
across the lung epithelium. August Krogh at first set out to prove this
hypothesis through precise and accurate measurements of gases in arterial
blood and alveolar air with new apparatus he had constructed. Marie joined
in this work, but the results they obtained did not support Bohr's
hypothesis; to the contrary a series of very careful studies definitively
proved that O2 is transported across the alveolar epithelium by diffusion
alone. Due to the conflict with Bohr's views they delayed publication of
the results until 1910. Marie Krogh, who finished her medical degree in
1907 and had begun a family, undertook an investigation of CO diffusion
capacity through human lungs. This was to test if the rate of O2 diffusion
was sufficient to account for the O2 uptake even at high altitudes or
during various pulmonary diseases. Thirty-five years later the CO method,
as described by Marie Krogh, was rediscovered and is now used extensively
as a clinical test. August, in his continued studies of respiration in
animals and humans, became interested in the delivery of O2 from the
capillaries to the tissue. The studies that followed led to his discovery
of the regulation of capillary circulation, for which he was awarded the
Nobel Prize in 1920.
