Artificial Respiration

Harvard Medical Library collection, Center for the History of Medicine in the Francis A. Countway Library, Harvard University

Experimenting with Artificial Respiration, 1927 (1–4)

May 27, 1927: After Philip Drinker’s and Louis Shaw’s successful laboratory and animal experimentation using positive and negative pressure to produce artificial respiration, Dr. Drinker tested the concept on himself on the roof of the Harvard School of Public Health at 55 Van Dyke Street (now called Shattuck Street).

(1) The experimental device was made from a rectangular sheet metal tank.
(2) Dr. Drinker prepares to enter the apparatus on a bed made from two "garage creepers."
(3) The attendant has just released the rubber collar on the subject's neck.
(4) Underneath the tank are two vacuum cleaner type pumps with inlet and outlet valves. Alternating pressure cycles are created by attendant, Louis Freni, manually operating a hand rocker valve to apply positive and negative pressure inside the chamber.

Harvard Medical Library collection, Center for the History of Medicine in the Francis A. Countway Library, Harvard University

Phillip Drinker testing the Second Respirator. Harvard Medical Library collection, Center for the History of Medicine in the Francis A. Countway Library, Harvard University

"The Story of the Iron Lung" in the Treasure Chest of Fun & Fact comic book. Harvard Medical Library collection, Center for the History of Medicine in the Francis A. Countway Library, Harvard University

The Second Drinker Respirator, 1928

This is the second prototype of Drinker's respirator and the first ever made for clinical use being tested on the roof of the Harvard School of Public Health in 1928. Its first clinical use occurred on October 13, 1928 at the Boston Children’s Hospital. The subject was an eight-year-old polio victim. In spite of her near-death condition, she recovered within less than a minute of being placed in the chamber. She remained in the respirator for 5 days before dying of cardiac failure. In September 1929, Barrett Hoyt, a Harvard senior dying of polio in the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, was placed in the Drinker respirator and immediately began breathing normally. After four weeks in the lung, Hoyt made a complete recovery.

Treasure Chest of Fun & Fact, was a Catholic comic book containing inspirational stories provided to parochial school students between 1946 and 1972. This issue (Vol.7, No.13, February 28, 1952) contains “The Story of the Iron Lung”—its creation and how the first person whose life was saved using it was a patient at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in September 1929.

Harvard Medical Library collection, Center for the History of Medicine in the Francis A. Countway Library, Harvard University

Exterior and Interior Views of a Room-sized Respirator in the Basement of Infant's Hospital, 1932

“Following the success of the initial respirator, Drinker constructed a room-sized respirator in the basement of Children’s Hospital.* The room was large enough to hold four or five patients and had a single door that could be opened and shut without interrupting the patients’ respiratory rhythm.” —Quoted from Founders of the School of Public Health, by Jean Alonzo Curran

*In 1932, the Infant's Hospital, whose patients were 2 years-old or younger, was located on the grounds of Children's Hospital. Although, legally an independent entity, it operated as a specialty arm of Children's Hospital until both hospitals were combined as part of the Children's Medical Center in the late 1940s.