iron lung
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 insti…
- The First Paralysed Breath…lity on the northern edge of Copenhagen maintained its summer routines: nurses in starched uniforms, rounds at appointed hours, the Emerson iron lung standing in its dedicated room as proof that modern medicine had prepared for emergencies. The hospital had only one Emerson iron lung and…
- A Theory of Poisoned Air…bedside of a girl whose chest rose and fell with mechanical perfection while her skin turned blue. The hospital possessed only one Emerson iron lung and some cuirass-type ventilators, and was already overwhelmed by paralytic polio patients, many of them young children. Bjørn Ibsen watche…