Blegdam Hospital
Books
- Breathing by Hand The Copenhagen Polio Epidemic and the Birth of Intensive Care · Liszt Think
In August 1952, Copenhagen’s Blegdam Hospital faced catastrophe as fifty paralyzed polio patients arrived daily with only one iron lung available.
- The City and the HospitalThe Emerson iron lung stands in the corner of Blegdam Hospital’s polio ward like a displaced piece of factory equipment, its cylindrical steel body painted institutional cream, its porthole windows clou…
- The First Paralysed Breath…ine and what it will be required to do. In late July 1952, before the students arrived and the wards became something no one had words for, Blegdam Hospital still operated within the boundaries of what it knew. The isolation facility on the northern edge of Copenhagen maintained its summer routi…
- A Theory of Poisoned AirThe gap between what the hospital imagined and what it was required to do waited to be named. At Blegdam Hospital in early August 1952, the naming began at the bedside of a girl whose chest rose and fell with mechanical perfection while her skin turned…