MAN IN IRON LUNG

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23529, 18 June 1938, Page 16

MAN IN IRON LUNG

CONDITION IMPROVES HOPE OF HIS RECOVERY Improvement in the condition of Frederick B. Suite, jun., of Chicago, who was stricken with infantile paralysis in China 25 months ago, so that he is able to breathe naturally for 23 minutes has given rise (says the Chicago Tribune of April 30) to hopes for his eventual recovery. - Ten months ago physicians said Snite could not live more than five minutes outside an iron lung. Since Snite was brought to the family’s winter home at Miami last October the original 10001 b lung in which he was brought back to the United States from Peking, China, has been supplanted for daytime use by an aluminium and rubber respirator that weighs only 171 b and permits Snite to be kept at a sitting position for several hours at a time. Only Snite's thorax muscles are paralysed. Recent examination showed his lungs and heart unimpaired by the long illness, and attendants say they know no reason why his nerve trunks eventually will not be restored completely. Attendants make no predictions, however, preferring to let results speak for his condition. “ I hope that by next year Frederick will be able to kick a hole in the respirator,” his father (Frederick B. Snite. sen.) said recently to 400 guests assembled at the Snite home for a party on the second anniversary of young Snite’s confinement to the respirator. The patient, too. has been more cheerful since he began using the light respirator. Being able to sit in a chair for several hours has broadened his mental horizon as well as improved his physical condition. Use of the new device permits attendants to massage his arms and legs more freely to stave off muscle atrophy.

The small respirator consists of an aluminium shell, fitted to the patient’s body and lined with moulded rubber, graduated in hardness to sponge rubber that forms an airtight seal, necessary to make the vacuum that expands and contracts the patient's lungs. A similar device, made of wood, and weighting 301 b, also has been used successfully. An arrangement of mirrors attached to the big iron lung which encloses the patient’s body permits Suite to read and play games with his attendants. At the recent party. Snite watched a series of boxing matches and spoke to his guests through a microphone. He told them about his twoyear confinement, and expressed the belief that he would be restored to normal health. Snite will be taken back to Chicago in the first week in June to remain there until next winter. His iron lung will be operated by batteries on the trip from his home to the railroad station, where he will be placed aboard a private car, especially equipped for the trip to Chicago. Snite, who i.s 27 years of age, is an experienced traveller, having been taken 9300 miles by truck, train, and ship from Peking to Chicago last summer, Then he made the 1500-mile trip to Miami without incident. Snite was on a world cruise when stricken by infantile paralysis in Peking. That he lived to return was because the only iron lung in China was in Peking, and he was placed in it without loss of time.