SAVING OF LIVES BY IRON LUNGS

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 148, 18 March 1939, Page 12

SAVING OF LIVES BY IRON LUNGS

ln England

INVENTOR ANSWERS 8.8. C. APPEAL By Telegraph—Press Association. AUCKLAND, March 17. How a young Australian answered a 8.8. C. broadcast appeal and used his inventive skill to save the lives of countless people stricken by respiratory paralysis was revealed today. It was a chapter in the story of a through passenger in the liner Mariposa, Mr. Edward T. Both, who is the inventor of the electro-cardiograph and designer of what are known as the iron lungs which are being distributed throughout the Empire under Lord Nuffield’s scheme. Though a primitive form of respirator was developed by a Frenchman m the nineteenth century, the iron lung has become an important factor in medical science only in recent years, it was developed by an American named Drinker, but when an epidemic of infantile paralysis occurred in Australia in 1937, Mr. Both, who had gained a reputation at Adelaide University as an inventor of electro-medical apparatus, was asked by the South Australian Government to design a lighter and more serviceable respirator.

Working as many as 16 hours a day, Mr. Both succeeded in his task and iron lungs of the cabinet type, with air pressure controlled by a bellows unit, were placed in immediate production. They played no small part in reducing the toll of the disease.

“Last year I went to England to demonstrate an electro-cardiograph I had invented,” Mr. Both said. “This is a portable machine similar to a wireless set and operating on the principle that every heart beat gives off a slight electric impulse. These are picked up by sensitive equipment and immediately recorded in the form of a graph on a disc, which is viewed through a small microscope.”

Radio Appeal Answered

While engaged in this work, he continued, he had heard an appeal broadcast by the 8.8. C. for an iron lung which was required urgently to save the life of a patient in a country hospital. Further inquiry showed that lives were being lost through want of respiratory equipment, and within 24 hours of the radio announcement he had hired a small workshop and begun the manufacture of equipment similar to the cheap machines he had designed in Australia. In conjunction with the hospital staff of the London County Council, Mr. Both worked feverishly in the ensuing weeks and, in response to urgent demands from country districts, Iron lungs were transported by - rail, road, and air to distant parts of Great Britain at all hours of the day and night. There was one occasion when a child suffering from infantile paralysis was given only an hour to live in Stamford, in the Midlands, but the timely arrival of a respirator from London effected an amazing improvement within a few minutes and the patient had now recovered.

“As a result of a film made in Oxford of various types of respirators in use, -Lord Nuffield became interested in my design and asked my permission to manufacture it for distribution throughout the Empire,” Mr. Both continued. “I was only too pleased to adopt his proposals, with the result that nearly 1000 of this type of iron lung had been ordered in England alone in December. Every hospital in the world should get one, for I can guarantee their efficiency and their extreme simplicity in operation. There is nothing that can be done wrongly.”