CHEAP RESPIRATORS

Greymouth Evening Star, 24 January 1942, Page 4

CHEAP RESPIRATORS

AUSTRALIAN APPARATUS. A respirator which costs a smiling to make and revives those suffering from gas poisoning and immersion has been proved in Sydney. It consists of a bag of pliofilm—chlorinated rubber which looks like cellophane. It is fitted over the patient’s head. Oxygen is passed into the bag and mixes with the patient’s carbon dioxide. Ambulance officers used it for the first time when they found a man apparently dead from gas poisoning in a house at Lakemba. The respirator and artificial resuscitation revived him in 30 minutes. Its inventor, Mr. W. J. Lawrence, lecturer in physiology at Sydney University, is an inveterate “gadgeteer.” At his home he has an enormous workshop full of lathes, drills and electricsaws, mostly made by himself. He has just finished a camping trailer for his car, and is now making an electric washing machine. When his front gate opens bells jangle all over the place. ’The gas in his bath-heater is lit automatically with an electric spark when the water is turned on. He made most of his own furniture. He tested the respirator on himsell and found the oxygen content in his lungs was increased five times in 15 minutes. “It may be good in shock cases,” he says. “I can’t tell. I’m not a doctor, but I do know that there is an enormously greater chance of keeping a drowned or gassed person alive.” The ambulance man who used it says it will revolutionise artificial respiration.