Unruled Notebook

It can be argued that one of the most influential articles ever published in the Journal of Applied Physiology is the Analysis of tissue and arterial blood temperatures in the resting human forearm by Harry H. Pennes, which appeared in Volume 1, No. 2, published in August, 1948. Thus begins Prof. Wissler, his 1998 revisit to this classic paper by H. H. Pennes. In that 1948 paper, he proposed what can be identified today as the first analytical Bioheat transfer model with experimental validation from temperature variation data in human forearm. Many later models have refined what he proposed but his basic insight that blood is a carrier of heat, adding a distinct perfusion term to the the standard heat equation, remains a major contribution.

(more…)