DOCTORS’ FINDINGS

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 62, Issue 4428, 21 May 1941, Page 7

DOCTORS’ FINDINGS

REPORT ON MECHANICAL RESPIRATION. MANUAL METHOD UPHELD. CHICAGO, 3rd April. The Journal of the American Medical Association reports on an important series of experiments which have proved that manual resuscitation of apparently drowned persons is superior to mechanical respiration despite the popular opinion to the contrai-y. For successful artificial respiration nothing can beat the two human hands (the journal asserts). Dr Yandell Henderson and Dr J. McCulloch Turner, both of New Haven (Connecticut), pointed out that the precious time often lost in obtaining and adjusting mechanical devices often means the difference between life and death for the patient. They also refuted the comimon belief resuscitation is the re-starting yf a machine that has stopped. Actually, if the vital machine has-fully stopj>ed, it cannot be re-started. I£ is not like a motor that can be re-started by the cranking of prone pressure. The Schafer method produces; all the pulmonary ventilation that the human physiology permits. This method is the simplest to learn, and therefore is the best. Even-’Tor cases of gas asphyxiation the Schafer method is best, and they recommended that firemen, policemen, seamen, miners, soldiers, boy and girl scouts, and college students should be taught the prone pressure respiratory meth-