LIFE-SAVING

Press, Volume LXXI, Issue 21416, 7 March 1935, Page 2 (Supplement)

LIFE-SAVING

Artificial Respiration Artificial respiration is necessary i£ a person is apparently drowned. For nearly 40 years the method adopted has been that suggested by Professor Sir E. Sharpey Schafcr. Till 1897 three other methods, known as the "Marshall Hall," the "Silvester," and the "Howard," were used, but a committee was set up in. that year by the Royal Medico-Cliirurgical Society with Professor Schafer as chairman, 1o determine which was the most efficient method; it, could not, however, recommend any. In all three methods the patient was laid on his back—a serious disadvantage. In asphyxia, especially from drowning—it may result from electric shock, too —the placing oJ? the patient on his back hinders the escape of water and mucus from the air-passages, and allows the tongue to fall back, thus blocking the throat. There is, too, in asphyxia, always great congestion and swelling of the liver, so that any pressure on the lower part and front of the chest, which is used in all three methods to assist expiration, may cause rupture of the liver.

After rejecting the three methods the committee recommended a new method, which they called the "prone-pressure" method. This has since been known as the Schafer method. In this the patient is laid face downward, and artificial respiration is carried on by the operator placing his hands on the small of the patient's back and, by, bending forward, throwing the weight of the body on the patient's loins. Thus the patient's abdomen is forced against the diaphragm, which rises and expels the air from the lungs. When the pressure is relaxed the elasticity of the parts restores the original position and air enters the lungs. Thus the method causes an exchange of air equal to that of ordinary breathing.