EMPIRE HOSPITALS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23691, 24 December 1938, Page 3

EMPIRE HOSPITALS

IRON LUNG EQUIPMENT LORD NUFFIELD'S GENEROSITY FILM AND RADIO MEDIA (From Our Own Correspondent) (By Air Mail) LONDON, Nov. 24, In connection with Lord Nuffield's latest practical gift—an " iron lung " to every hospital and institution in the British Empire that needs one, it is pleasing to hear that Lord Nuffield first became interested in the apparatus when he saw a film of it made by Professor R. R. Macintosh, Nuffield professor aneesthetics at the University of Oxford. Professor Macintosh came from Dunedin a good many years ago, and was well known in London as anaethetist before going to Oxford. "It convinced me that no hospital in the Empire which needed an iron lung should be without one," said the donor. Motor car factories can produce anything. They can produce the iron lung without any need for rebuilding or changing machinery. " I shall use the brains at my factory to collaborate with the medical men. We will make improvements to the iron lung as they are discovered—always with the full permission of the medical experts. Production of respirator has already started. The first will be sent out early in the new year. I shall start by making a thousand of them. "LIFE INSURANCE" "My offer will remain open. until the last demand is made. I do not think I shall need to manufacture more than 5000. I want hospitals to regard my gift as a "life insurance." I shall be the sole judge of who shall ge: these iron lungs. In some cases I shall send three or four lungs to one hospital. They may need them. Smaller hospitals may have to rely on the iron lung I present to a larger hospital nearby. On the other hand, there may be small hospitals 800 miles from the nearest big town. I know of such stations in Australia. These will get an iron lung." Hospitals and institutions will be asked to pay £1 a year for each iron lung they receive to pay for servicing. Lord Nuffield explained: "I don't want a 'lung' to be out of.service for two years and then, when it is needed, be unworkable." AUSTRALIAN DESIGNER The apparatus to be made is designed by. Mr E. T. Both, who drew up his plans after hearing a radio appeal in July last year for an iron lung to save an infantile paralysis victim in South Australia. In the "Both" lung the patient is put in an airtight box, with his head protruding through a sponge-lined collar. Electrically-worked bellows withdraw air from the box—and the lungs expand. Air is pumped back •into the box—and the patient is forced to breathe out. Patients have been kept alive for nine months. Dr Macintosh points out that infantile paralysis is only a temoorary disability, and that therefore enhances the value of the availability of these machines if used in time.