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This dissertation reviews the history of therapeutic pneumothorax and the theories of its modus operandi and gives the results of Tørning's experiments on animals. Of the usual laboratory animals, the rabbit is the only one that has a sufficiently rigid mediastinum to be useful in the study of unilateral collapse. A new technic was used to study the rates of ventilation of the two lungs separately without opening the pleural cavity or injuring the thoracic skeleton. The changes in the ventilation of the two sides are described in detail for open, and for various degrees of closed, unilateral pneumothorax. Measurements of the rate of oxygen consumption and the degree of oxygenation of the arterial blood were used to calculate the rate of circulation through the lungs and enabled Tørning to show that in a collapsed lung the circulation is so reduced that it may sink to less than 15 per