Philip Drinker

Encyclopedia : P : PH : PHI : Philip Drinker

Philip Drinker (December 12, 1894 - October 19, 1972)He was born in Haverford, Pennsylvania. Philip Drinker was an inventor of the iron lung, along with Louis Agassiz Shaw. The iron lung is a respirator; he also devised a small chamber for maintaining respiration in newborn babies. When Philip Drinker was studying the hazard of exposure to lead and dust he developed the iron lung. In the 1940's-50's the iron lung saved a lot of people during the polio outbreaks. The people that were in the iron lung had polio. The iron lung is composed of a cylindrical steel drum, which encloses the entire body with only the head exposed. Today there are roughly 200-300 hundred iron lungs. There were several problems with the iron lung, such as food or vomit were at times inhaled in to the lungs.

Historical Trends

Afterthought

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.