Posts Tagged Medical Breakthroughs

Instructing nurses on the use of respirator for a polio patient, May 23, 1958

Nursing uniforms initially resembled maids’ uniforms and emphasized the subservient nature of their position. By the early 20th century, however, nursing schools adopted distinctive uniforms to foster professional identity. In this particular photograph, the nurses are being instructed on the use of an iron lung for polio patients.

(National Archives, General Records of the Department of Labor (174-G-30-1))
[See Also: The Iron Lung]

Elizabeth Blackwell

In 1849, Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman in America to receive a M.D. degree.

Born in Bristol, England, Blackwell’s family moved to America when she was eleven-years old. Initially, the thought of being a doctor did not appeal to Blackwell.

[I] hated everything connected with the body, and could not bear the sight of a medical book . . . My favourite [sic] studies were history and metaphysics, and the very thought of dwelling on the physical structure of the body and its various ailments filled me with disgust.

When a dying friend confided in Blackwell about how a female doctor could have lessened her suffering, Blackwell began to look at medicine differently. After she began researching and inquiring about the possibility of studying medicine, she soon realized the challenges facing women. Spurred on by those challenges, she studied medicine independently for a year before applying to all of the medical schools in Ne w York and Philadelphia and twelve more in the northeast states.

In 1847, Geneva Medical College in western New York accepted her on the condition that the all-male student body and faculty would vote. She was granted admittance when they voted “yes” as a joke. Little did they know that Blackwell was entirely serious in her decision to study medicine and two years later, she earned her M.D. degree.

After graduating, Blackwell worked in London and Paris clinics before contracting “purvulent opthalmia.” By 1851 she lost sight in one eye and her goal of becoming a surgeon ended. She returned to New York City and established her own practice but closed it after too few patients and no room for intellectual exchange with fellow physicians. She sought a larger idea instead. By 1856 her younger sister, Dr. Emily Blackwell, and Dr. Marie Zakrzewska, joined her and together they opened the New York Infirmary for Women and Children. Eleven years later the women opened a medical college for women pursuing medicine. Through their institution and college they provided opportunities for women in the medical field as well as giving medical care to the poor.

Blackwell moved back to England as her health became to decline. She still campaigned for women in medicine, the women’s rights movement and for sanitation and hygiene reform in hospitals until her death on May 13, 1910.

Information
National Library of Medicine website.
National Women’s Hall of Fame website.
Western New York Suffragists website.

E. Donnall Thomas

In 1956, physician E. Donnall Thomas performed the first successful  bone marrow transplant.

The first transplant was between a set of identical twins. Thirteen years later, Thomas and his team performed the first transplant on a leukemia patient with a relative, not an identical twin.

Through successful bone marrow transplants, the survival rates for leukemia and lymphomas cancer patients greatly increase.

In 1990, Thomas received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

Craft, Dr. Naomi. The Little Book of Medical Breakthroughs. New York: Metro Books, 2010, 134.
Photo and Nobel Prize information via the Nobel Prize website.

A patient inside an iron lung

Also known as a negative pressure ventilator, the iron lung was a medical breakthrough. If a patient lost the ability to breathe independently due to injury or illness, such as polio, they were placed in the iron lung. Their bodies are put inside a steel drum-like contraption with only their heads and necks out of the chamber. The air-tight container uses air pressure to manipulate the patent’s lungs to mimic the pattern of breathing.

Philip Drinker and Louis Agassiz Shaw created the first iron lung in 1927. This early model consisted of one electric motor and two vacuum cleaners. It was successful in keeping the patient breathing until they could do it independently.   

The Bellevue hospital in New York was the first hospital to install the iron lung.

From 1939, iron lung machines were widely distributed to hospitals around the country. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a polio survivor himself, helped promote the iron lung and polio research through his National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis (now known as the March of Dimes). Roosevelt’s foundation helped to fund the distribution of iron lungs.

Martha Mason inside her iron lung

The average cost of an iron lung in the 1930s was $1,500, the same amount as the average home.

Martha Mason spent over 60 years in an iron lung after contracting polio at 11 years old. In September 1939, after the death of her older brother to polio, she too was diagnosis with the disease. According to her obituary in the New York Times, “Ms. Mason was one of the last handful of Americans, perhaps 30 people, who live full time in iron lungs.” Her iron lung was 7 feet long and weighed over 800 pounds. Confined to the machine, Mason was not deterred in life and graduated top of her class in high school and college. In 2003, she wrote about her life inside an iron lung in her memoir, Breathe. She passed away in her sleep on May 4, 2009.

Further Reading

Fox, Margalit. “Martha Mason, Who Wrote Book About Her Decade in an Iron Lung, Dies at 71.” New York Times, May 9, 2009.

Craft, Dr. Naomi. The Little Book of Medical Breathroughs. New York: Metro Books, 2010. 110-111.

“The Iron Lung and Other Equipment,” Smithsonian Institute.

Photos – Getty Images and Martha Mason