Abstract
IN 1862 a committee, which included several eminent medical men and physiologists—amongst the latter Dr., now Sir, John Burdon Sanderson-was appointed by the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society to investigate the phenomena attendant upon drowning, and the methods which had been recommended for the recovery of apparently drowned persons. That committee made a number of experiments in man upon the dead subject, and upon animals during life, and the results they obtained were duly published in the Transactions of the society. But it appeared important to renew the inquiry with modern methods, and.a second committee for the investigation of this important subject was accordingly appointed a few years ago, with Prof. Schafer as chairman. This second committee attempted, in the first instance, to pursue the inquiry as to the best means of carrying on artificial respiration, in the same manner as the 1862 committee, i.e. upon the cadaver, but met with grave difficulties from the outset in the enormous resistance which the condition of rigor mortis sets up to effecting changes of volume of the chest, a difficulty which had been also met by the earlier committee, and very imperfectly surmounted. The new committee accordingly decided to discard the cadaver, and to endeavour to determine in the living human subject how great an amount of air could be moved into and out of the lungs by movements imparted to the thorax by the agency of external force. This: force was applied either by intermittent traction upon the arms, or by intermittent pressure upon the thorax, the subject being either in the supine or. prone position, and remaining perfectly passive during the short period of the experiment. The amount of air taken in and given out was measured in a graduated vessel, or by means of an ordinary gasometer.
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The Resuscitation of the Apparently Drowned . Nature 68, 326 (1903). https://doi.org/10.1038/068326a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/068326a0