Background
Henry Bazett was born on June 25, 1885, in Gravesend, England, the second of two children of Henry Bazett, a clergyman, later a physician, and Eliza Ann (Cruickshank) Bazett.
Henry Bazett was born on June 25, 1885, in Gravesend, England, the second of two children of Henry Bazett, a clergyman, later a physician, and Eliza Ann (Cruickshank) Bazett.
Henry Bazett attended Dover College and Wadham College, Oxford, from which he received the B. A. in 1908, M. S. in 1913, and M. D. in 1919. He received his clinical training at St. Thomas's Hospital, attaining qualification in 1910. In 1912 Bazett was granted a Radcliffe traveling fellowship, which enabled him to spend a year in postgraduate study at Harvard University.
During World War I Bazett served as a member of the Royal Army Medical Corps in France. He received the M. C. , was mentioned three times in dispatches, and on demobilization was appointed an officer, Order of the British Empire, in 1918. While serving as a medical officer at advanced posts he became much interested in wound shock as well as in the sensation and effects of cold. During the first battle of Ypres he suffered an attack of acute appendicitis. He was operated on in a tent at the front and the appendiceal abscess drained. He was not expected to survive, and the number of wounded to be evacuated was so great that he was left unattended in the unheated tent until found by a friend of his own unit, who had him transferred to a base hospital. Bazett regarded his experience as a fine test of the effect of cold on shock.
After demobilization, Bazett returned to Oxford as Christopher Welch lecturer in clinical pathology and was appointed fellow of Magdalen College. During this period he served as Sir Charles Sherrington's assistant. It was under the supervision of Sherrington that Bazett and W. G. Penfield undertook one of their first major research projects, "A Study of the Sherrington Decerebrate Animal in the Chronic as well as in the Acute Condition" (1922). Bazett's interests, however, were in the clinical aspects of physiology and, on being unable to obtain the post he desired, he accepted in 1921 the professorship of physiology at the University of Pennsylvania, a position he retained until his death. Here he thought he would have an opportunity to do research and teach the appropriate mixture of basic and clinical physiology.
After initial work on nervous system function, Bazett turned to the study of circulation, blood volume, temperature sense, and body temperature regulations. For some years he was the author of the section on cardiovascular physiology in Macleod's Physiology and Biochemistry in Modern Medicine. He made a major contribution to the discovery of "counter current" effects, which show how the anatomical arrangement of veins and arteries provides an excellent mechanism for the exchange of heat. Cold venous blood from an extremity may, through this exchange, be at thermal neutrality before reaching the body core, there being thus a conservation of heat and an easier protection of core temperature. Bazett studied acclimatization in man and was the first to establish clearly that an increase in blood volume occurs in adaptation to a hot environment. He had a penchant for making drastic experiments on himself; in his studies of thermal sense and body temperature control, he had thermocouples inserted under his skin at various depths and in nearly every available blood vessel. His contributions in this field were considerable and he reviewed many of them in a chapter on temperature regulation in The Physiology of Temperature Regulation and the Science of Clothing, edited by L. H. Newburgh (1949). His work on blood flow and temperature change in arteries and veins is still considered important.
Bazett always retained his British nationality and felt some responsibility for all English-speaking peoples. In 1940, when the United States was not yet at war, he took a leave of absence from Pennsylvania to do aviation medical research in Canada. After the death of Sir Frederick Banting left that research effort without a leader, Bazett headed the Canadian Committee on Aviation Medical Research from 1941 to 1943. His advice was continually requested on both sides of the Atlantic during World War II. He was a temporary member of the British Medical Research Council and carried out a mission to India and Burma in 1944 for consultation with the R. A. F. and Royal Navy, after which he was made a commander of the Order of the British Empire (1946); he also served with the U. S. Office of Scientific Research and Development. He was a member of the council of the American Physiological Society (president-elect at the time of his death) and was also one of the founders of the International Union of Physiological Sciences.
Bazett was highly competitive, and this characteristic plus his curiosity and disregard of his own safety caused his friends considerable anxiety on his behalf. When he was engaged in his early studies of the effects of gravity, he would seek out the most daring R. C. A. F. pilots and insist they "take him up" and demonstrate what was required to make him "black out. " He was soon officially grounded. He was a swimmer and liked competition, frequently beating much younger men. At one Physiology Society discussion the question was raised as to how long a man could stay under water. The prevailing opinion was that one minute was about the limit for an untrained man. Bazett took the group to a swimming pool where he swam under water for two minutes. This demonstration unfortunately precipitated his first heart attack. As a laboratory teacher Bazett was excellent and inspired enthusiasm in his students. As a lecturer he was sometimes brilliant but at other times would become sidetracked into somewhat tedious mathematical formulations. Nevertheless his perpetually youthful spirit and his alertness of mind made him popular with his associates and students. Bazett died of a heart attack on board the Queen Mary while en route to a conference of physiologists at Copenhagen. He was a member of the Church of England and was buried in a small cemetery in Oxford, England.
Henry Bazett was a temporary member of the British Medical Research Council; a member of the council of the American Physiological Society; one of the founders of the International Union of Physiological Sciences; head of the Canadian Committee on Aviation Medical Research from 1941 to 1943; a member of the Church of England.
On March 10, 1917, Bazett married Dorothy Livesey; they had two children, Hazel and Donald John.