Medicine: Mechanical Minutemen

Jack Reichart, a 64-year-old inventor and appliance manufacturer of Muncie, Ind. had never seen an “iron lung” respirator in his life. Last week he was asked to make one in a hurry. Muncie’s Ball Memorial Hospital, which owned the only iron lung in three counties, suddenly had 28 polio (infantile paralysis) patients on its hands. That lung was in use when Rue Steel, an eight-year-old boy who urgently needed a respirator, was brought in. Hospital Superintendent Nellie Brown asked Reichart if he could turn out an emergency job.

Reichart studied data on the complex machine at his little factory, then called for what he needed. Businessmen donated steel barrels and alcohol drums, plywood, motors and parts from vacuum cleaners, small crankshafts from outboard motors. Employees volunteered their labor and worked all night. After ten hours the lung was ready for Rue Steel. The mechanical minutemen kept on, making seven more, and Reichart drew blueprints from which any small-town machine shop could put together an emergency lung.

Last week, widespread polio created other emergencies:

¶ In mid-Pacific the Army transport General William O. Darby radioed a plea for an iron lung to save John Driskell, 6, son of a sergeant homeward bound from duty in Japan. The Coast Guard cutter Iroquois raced 1,000 miles from Honolulu with a lung; the boy was transferred to the cutter and taken to the hospital in Hawaii.

¶ In Covington, Ky., Mrs. Robert G. Davis, 24, had been in an iron lung for 24 hours when she gave birth to a healthy, 5 lb. 4 oz. girl. For final delivery the lung was opened, and the motor shut off, for only 15 seconds. Mrs. Davis’ condition was obstetrically good but she was still gravely ill from polio.

¶ New York City appealed for 200 graduate nurses for emergency polio duty in city hospitals at premium pay. With 362 cases in July and 209 in the last week, the city had what Health Commissioner Harry S. Mustard called “a mild epidemic.” But he warned that with plenty of hot weather still to come, a heavy polio case load could be expected until well into September.

Many sections of the nation reported the number of polio victims rising rapidly. The U.S. Public Health Service (which tabulates its annual statistics from the third week of March, when cases are fewest) listed a total of 5,415 in the current “polio year,” against 4,230 in the same period of 1948. But P.H.S. still insisted that the disease was epidemic only in some areas—Arkansas, Indiana, Oklahoma, Texas and Southern California.

Officials clung to the hope that this year, unlike last, the crippling disease might reach a peak at an early date, then quickly taper off.

In mid-July the Continental Casualty Co. of Chicago began promoting a novel, simple insurance policy, exclusively for polio. The two-year premium: $5 for an individual, $10 for a family, with benefits up to $5,000 per case. Last week, Continental found that it had an underwriter’s bestseller. It had taken in almost $1,000,000 (90% from family policies) and a polio-conscious public was expected to run the total to $3,000,000 by year’s end.