Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
pine boards, three hinges from a trunk, some metal rings, a rubber sheet, an air hose, and
a vacuum pump. A few weeks later, with money provided by the Ontario government, six
steel replicas of their wooden respirator were manufactured in the hospital workshop at a
cost of less than $500 each (Anon., 1937).
At about the same time, Maxwell Reynolds, a prominent Marquette citizen, and hos-
pital engineer Lowell Reynolds also designed a wooden lung. This saved the lives of
numerous children throughout the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and elsewhere. Appar-
ently plans for building the wooden lung were written up in medical journals and used
throughout the country. No one patented the design, and no profit was made by anyone
involved in the project.
During the height of the polio epidemic years, Philip Drinker and Edgar Roy also
provided instructions for building an emergency respirator for cases of life-threatening
paralysis. Although this emergency solution was intended only for use until a produc-
tion version arrived, it was functional enough to save lives. In contrast to the original,
manufactured iron lung, Drinker and Roy employed common household and conveniently
available hardware-store materials in their emergency respirator. The materials included a
car inner tube for a rubber collar, a common vacuum cleaner to provide pressure, a 6-inch
square piece of double-thick glass, a piece of sole leather to serve as the valve, a glass
U-tube with colored water to show pressure, and several pieces of spruce. The detailed
construction plans, of which one page is shown in Figure 9-30, clearly indicated that it
FIGURE 9-30
Photographs of a
homemade plywood
lung.' (Drinker and
Roy 1938).
Copyright Elsevier,
reproduced with
permission.
