U.S. HEALTH SCHOOL DEVELOPS NEW POLIO AID

Grey River Argus, 5 October 1949, Page 4

U.S. HEALTH SCHOOL DEVELOPS NEW POLIO AID

(Rec. 5.20) NEW YORK, Oct. 3. A ton-inch box, resembling a portable radio, was announced to-day as the latest aid in the fight against infantile paralysis. Two scientists of the Harvard School of Public Health, Dr Stanley Sarnoff and Dr James Whittenberger, disclosed that they had invented a new electro-phrenic respirator. It was for use in those paralysis "cases where 1 the cumbersome iron lung is net effective. The same school produced the iron lung. The new aid, known as “E.F.R.”, could be plugged in to the ordinary house current. An electrode, leading from the respirator, carried the current to the phrenic nerve —which controlled the breathing—in the patient’s neck. This electric charge stimulated the normal breathing, while nature restored the disrupted nerv e centres. Dr Sarnoff emphasised that the iron lung was still necessary for the respiratory types of spinal paralysis. The E.P.R. had been used in only nine major cases thus far, but it was successful in all. At present there were six of these devices in existence. Their production would begin shortly, with their distribution expected to be in progress early in 1950. The cost would be from ten or fifteen per cent, of the cost of the iron lung, which was developed at the Harvard School twenty years ago.