It proves to be a harbinger of doom: Many of the laborers — and Roebling himself — would be stricken with decompression sickness or “caisson disease.”

Exposure to such pressures is apt to be followed by disagreeable and even dangerous physiological effects, which are commonly referred to as caisson disease or compressed air illness.

The chief danger of caisson work is the "bends," or "caisson disease."

As most physicians are aware, the caisson disease is an affection of the spinal cord, due to a sudden transition from a relatively high atmospheric pressure to one much lower.

The caisson disease is popularly called "the bends" a kind of paralysis which is more or less baffling to medical science.