A method is described for the study of breath holding in which the breath holds are separated by rebreathing to enable accurate control of pCO2; its theoretical basis is discussed.At the end of a breath hold, rebreathing a mixture such that the pCO2 continues to rise, nevertheless permits the breath hold to be resumed. The number of breaths during the rebreathing is unimportant and a single breath permits as long a resumed breath hold as five breaths.Healthy adult males held their breath at residual volume. The relationship between breath holding time and pCO2 at the start or end of a breath hold was found to be linear; the higher the pCO2 the shorter the breath holding time. The relationship was unaffected by ten minutes of isocapnic hyperventilation.These findings imply that the duration of breath holding is directly related to PCO2 but is unaffected by the previous mechanical pattern of breathing.MOST of the factors of importance in determining the breaking point of breath holding have been known for many years. Hill and Flack [1908] noted that if oxygen was breathed beforehand rather than air, the breath holding time was longer. They also noted that the alveolar pCO2 (hereafter referred to as pCO2) was higher at breaking point after breath holding on oxygen; this was presumably due to the longer duration of breath holding.In the same paper they reported that their subjects could rebreathe expired air from a bag for some two to four times as long as their maximum breath holding time on air. They thus demonstrated that ventilation of the lungs allowed the subject to tolerate a greater hypoxia and greater hypercapnia than occurred at the breaking point of breath holding. This finding, now some sixty years old, suggests that some form of interaction of chemicall and mechanical stimuli occurs during breath holding. Subsequent studies defined the roles of oxygen, CO2 and lung volume more clearly [Douglas and Haldane, 1909;Klocke and Rahn, 1959;Muxworthy, 1951] and the whole subject has been reviewed by Mithoefer [1964]. The relationship between rebreathing and breath holding was further explored by Fowler [1954]. He found that after subjects had reached the breaking point of a breath hold, a few breaths of a gas mixture which did not improve their blood gases allowed them to perform a second, shorter breath hold, and subsequently a third. He did not attempt to determine the number of breaths necessary to allow the second (or third) breath hold of the series.