PHYSICIANS ON THE FRONT LINE
(continued from page 25)
required the use of a chest respirator during the day and a rock-
ing bed at night. He was an avid reader and lived to see most of
his grandchildren born. Before polio, he not only established the
American hospital at Benghazi but also was a licensed pilot and
accomplished mountain climber as well as a husband and father
of three children. [7] Thus I dedicate this paper to him.
The watershed event, however, was back in the Libyan Desert in
1957. After landing and having tea with the doctors and “sisters,”
we went to see Dr. Cornell, and instead of an iron lung existence
he was lying in bed with a machine by his bed from which a tubing
ran to a tracheotomy! It was my first view of a ventilator. I remem-
ber the name, “Radcliffe Ventilator from Oxford.” The patient was
receiving wonderful bedside care and was very content. He had a
large #10 cuffed tracheotomy tube in place. He was not happy when
we showed him our little cage. Suffice it to say, I gave him my best
bedside charm (as much as a future internist could give a surgeon),
and we made the move to Seattle. Kendal Cornell told me this was
the first time the ventilator had been used by the British.
In the period of medicine we have just covered, there was no
CPR. When you died, you died. As a resident, I did open chest
cardiac massage occasionally on selected patients on the wards,
but we largely operated in the dark since monitoring was to come
along later as a result of the space program. Closed chest cardiac
resuscitation started as I finished my residency in 1961. Soon, we
were off and running into a brave new world of prolongation of life,
sometimes good but maybe not always, and polio was no longer
the archenemy.
So, a gas and electric company initiated a chain of events that
led to a discovery of ways to breathe for a human when he could
not breathe for himself. They also sparked defibrillation. A dread
disease, polio, propelled this artificial breathing into widespread
use. Better ways were then found to do this.
Thanks to the sacrifice of Dr. Roy Cornell and his many fellow
patients. In a sense, we have our present system of artificial ven-
tilation.
Dr. Smith is a retired internist.
Editor’s Note: This story was presented to the Innominate Society for
the Study of Medical History in 2003.
Tony Gould, A Summer Plague (Yale University Press 1995 New Haven &
London).
[1]
[2]
Lynne M. Dunphy, “The Steel Cocoon,” Nursing History Review 9: (2001) 3-33.
Naomi Rogers, Dirt and Disease, (Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick,
NJ 1992) p.21.
[3]
[4]
Gould, op. cit., p.54-84.
John Paul, History of Poliomyelitis (Yale University Press 1971 New Haven
and London) p.6, 7
[5]
Wilson H. and Schroering G.: The Air Evacuation of Patients with Poliomyelitis.
Project number 21-1602-0001, USAF School of Aviation Medicine, January 1955
[6]
[7]
26
Cornell, Kendal, Esq. Personal Communication. February 2003
LOUISVILLE MEDICINE