Another caboose story

by Iain Campbell

When I was on base and you [i.e. Andy Smith -- Ed.] were BC I took five folk off for a week just after mid winter - when it was dark. Two of us (Toby Stoneham and I) slept in a tent, the four others slept in the caboose which was at third chip. I took their watches off them and they took up a 25-26h day, as you would expect them to, so that at the end of a week they were getting up at 4PM and going to bed at 8AM. We read a lot of books and played a lot of cards. The aim was to look at the effect of this "free running lifestyle" on carbohydrate (glucose) metabolism. This involved giving them 50g of glucose to drink then taking blood at 30 min intervals for 2.5 hours. The worst bit was having a meteorologist (Roger Daynes) take blood off me. Anyway the upshot was that they all tended to become diabetic. The results were published in Diabetologia in 1975.