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I didn't mean to imply that they didn't have a name for it then- there's always a name- just like the Africans used to call AIDS "Slim". I was mainly getting at they didn't have any idea what was causing it which was unfortunate because they were doing the very thing that causes it. Applying a few simple rules would have drastically cut the instances of it in the Brooklyn Bridge case although they still would've occured most likely because they didn't have the Navy decompression charts that came along much later.

That particular case always just struck me because that's always a big thing in the back of every scuba diver's mind after you surface. Particularly if you've been pretty close to the limits on the chart or on your dive computer. You find yourself worrying about every little twinge or slight pain and thinking 'sh!t, I hope I didn't get bent'. Just to imagine that the workers were in a compressed chamber at depth for hours at a time and then took an elevator up- Man! It makes me shudder to think about it. And they were just a load of Irishmen trying to make a buck.

I didn't mean to imply that you meant to imply.

Anyway.

I know all about the bends--I grew up watching Lloyd Bridges in Sea Hunt!

As for the McCullough book, it was pretty good and certainly worth reading.

McCullough also wrote "Truman," "Mornings on Horseback," "The Path Between the Seas."

"Mornings on Horseback" was good, but I found Morris's book, "The Rise of Theordore Roosevelt," on the same subject more enjoyable (I must have read it at least four times).

"Truman" is on my bookshelf, waiting its turn to be read.

And "The Path Between the Seas" I read about twenty years ago--also worth it; like "The Great Bridge," it's the story of another engineering marvel: the Panama Canal.

As I remember, "The Great Bridge" was lighter reading than "The Path Between the Seas," which was about a more complex subject to begin with.

All good books.