Wired for Love

The assorted scientists (see above] in the Ocean Hall of Atlantic City's Marlborough-Blenheim Hotel began to feel uncomfortably crowded, and the chairman had to rap for order as newcomers jostled for standing room. Clearly, they had not come to hear the speaker's closing remarks on "Protein Composition of Rat Uterine Luminal Fluid," but to be on hand for the American Physiological Society's next and daring paper: "Physiological Responses During Coitus in the Human."

Gravely and matter-of-factly, Dr. Roscoe G. Bartlett, 29, now with the National Institutes of Health, described experiments that he had carried out with Dr. Vernon C. Bohr at a university which he refused to name. This sort of secrecy had extended to the experiments: three volunteer married couples took part, but their identities were not known to the researchers--only to an intermediary. On separate occasions, in a suitably private room, each volunteer couple attached wires and electrodes to themselves. These were connected with the scientists' recording instruments in another room. Then they had sexual intercourse. Before, during and after intercourse, the instruments diligently recorded the heart and breathing rates, made electrocardiograms of each person. The scientists' findings, not altogether surprising: P: In both man and woman the normal heart rate of 70 per minute soars to 170 a minute. The rate is apt to be higher in the man. The physical activity alone is not enough to account for this high acceleration of heartbeat; emotion does the rest. P: The breathing rate, normally 15 to 18 a minute, triples. As a result of this over-breathing, the body loses carbon dioxide too rapidly. This may explain the occasional rigidity of the arm and leg muscles --previously noted by Sexologist Alfred Kinsey (TIME, Aug. 24, 1953). P: The increases in heart and breathing rates up to orgasm and the gradual decline afterward are remarkably closely synchronized in the partners. P: Electrocardiograms show a surprisingly large number of abnormal and skipped heartbeats, especially at orgasm. These aberrations were not repeated when the same individuals later engaged in strenuous exercise, such as running.

Purpose of this scientific invasion of the bedroom, according to the experimenters: "Merely to collect facts . . ." One possible benefit: to help physicians advise victims of heart attacks and those with heart failure, as well as victims of strokes, on their capacity to engage safely in sexual relations.

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