IRON LUNGS

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 156, 30 December 1938, Page 7

IRON LUNGS

THE NUFFIELD GIFTS

START WITH A THOUSAND

THE DONOR'S TERMS

(By Air Mail, from "The Post's" London Representative.)

LONDON, November 24,

In connection with Lord Nuffield's latest ■'• practical gift—an "iron lung"— to every hospital and institution in the British Empire that needs one, it is pleasing to hear that Lord Nuffield first became interested in the apparatus when he saw a film of it made by Professor R. R. Macintosh, Nuffield Professor of Anaesthetics at the University of Oxford. Professor Macintosh came from Dunedin a good many years ago, and was well-known in London as an anaesthetist before going to Oxford. "It convinced me that no hospital in the Empire which needed an iron lung should be without one," said the donor. "Motor-car factories can produce almost anything. They can produce the iron lung without any need for reouilding or changing of machinery, i "I shall use the brains at my factory to collaborate with the medical men. We will make improvements to the iron lung as they are discovered —always with the full permission of the medical experts. Production of the respirator has already started. The first will be sent out early in the New Year. I shall start by making a thousand of them. TERMS OF THE OFFER. "My offer will remain open until the last demand is made. I do not think I shall need to manufacture more than 5000. I want hospitals to regard my gift as a 'life insurance.' I shall be the sole judge of who shall get these iron lungs. In some cases I shall send three or four lungs to one hospital. They may need them. Smaller hospitals may have to rely on the iron lung I present to a larger hospital nearby. On the other hand, there may be small hospitals 800 miles from the nearest big town. I know of such stations in Australia. These will get an iron lung." Hospitals and institutions will be asked to pay £1 a year for each iron lung they receive to pay for servicing, Lord Nuffield explained. "I don't want a 'lung' to be out of service for two years and then, when it is needed, be unworkable." . The apparatus to be made is designed by Mr. E. T. Botl . who drew up his plans after hearing a radio appeal in July last year for an iron lung to save an infantile paralysis victim in South Australia. In the "Both" lung the patient is put in an airtight box, with his, head protruding through a sponge-lined collar. Electrically-worked bellows withdraw air from the box: —and the lungs ex* pand. Air is pumped back into the box —and the patient is forced to breathe out. Patients have been kept alive for nine months. " Dr. Macintosh points out .that in-, fantile paralysis is only a temporary disability, and that, therefore, enhances the value of the availability of these machines, if used in time.