On this day, October 12, 1928, the iron lung was used for the first time.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

• 1928 – The iron lung (example pictured), a type of medical ventilator, was used for the first time, to treat an eight-year-old girl paralyzed by polio.


Emerson iron lung

Iron lung

{snip}

Invention and early use

Initial development



Iron lung from the 1950s in the Gütersloh Town Museum. In Germany, fewer than a dozen of these breathing machines are available to the public.

In 1670, English scientist John Mayow came up with the idea of external negative pressure ventilation. Mayow built a model consisting of bellows and a bladder to pull in and expel air. The first negative pressure ventilator was described by British physician John Dalziel in 1832. Successful use of similar devices was described a few years later. Early prototypes included a hand-operated bellows-driven "Spirophore" designed by Dr Woillez of Paris (1876), and an airtight wooden box designed specifically for the treatment of polio by Dr Stueart of South Africa (1918). Stueart's box was sealed at the waist and shoulders with clay and powered by motor-driven bellows.

Drinker and Shaw tank



A Drinker iron lung displayed at the chapel of Netley Hospital, 2018

The first of these devices to be widely used however was developed in 1928 by Phillip Drinker and Louis Shaw of the United States. The iron lung, often referred to in the early days as the "Drinker respirator", was invented by Philip Drinker (1894–1972) and Louis Agassiz Shaw Jr., professors of industrial hygiene at the Harvard School of Public Health. The machine was powered by an electric motor with air pumps from two vacuum cleaners. The air pumps changed the pressure inside a rectangular, airtight metal box, pulling air in and out of the lungs. The first clinical use of the Drinker respirator on a human was on October 12, 1928, at the Boston Children's Hospital in the US. The subject was an eight-year-old girl who was nearly dead as a result of respiratory failure due to polio. Her dramatic recovery, within less than a minute of being placed in the chamber, helped popularize the new device.

{snip}

[riversedge]

1. Decades after polio, Martha is among the last to still rely on an iron lung to breathe October 25,

Decades after polio, Martha is among the last to still rely on an iron lung to breathe
October 25, 202110:42 AM ET

https://www.npr.org/2021/10/25/1047691984/decades-after-polio-martha-is-among-the-last-to-still-rely-on-an-iron-lung-to-br




......................Wear on parts is her main issue now. The belts need to be replaced every few weeks, the cot inside every six months, the motor every 12 years or so.

Her most immediate need is collars. The collars create the critical airtight seal around the neck. Each one lasts only for a few months. And she has bought all the back stock of collars from places that don't produce them anymore.

Martha Lillard says she worries about running out of replacement parts to make her iron lung respirator function properly.
Courtesy of Martha Lillard

"That's the main thing I'm having a hard time with, because I try to stretch out, make these collars last longer," Lillard says. "And when they start deteriorating, it gets harder and harder to breathe as they leak more."

She has only a handful of collars left. "I really am desperate," she says. "That's the most scary thing in my life right now — is not finding anybody that can make those collars."..........................


https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2021/10/20/martha-lillard_custom-813a40a3402c9a35abe6ce37ab1414479a563b99-s300-c85.webp
...............