Description of a simple and efficient method of performing artificial respiration in the human subject especially in cases of drowning / by E. A. Shafer.

  • Sharpey-Schäfer, E. A. (Edward Albert), Sir, 1850-1935.
Date:
1904
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Description of a simple and efficient method of performing artificial respiration in the human subject especially in cases of drowning / by E. A. Shafer. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    amount of air exchange per minute effected nearly as great as the air exchange of natural respiration. With the pressure methods, and especially with the prone-pressure method here described, it is far otherwise. In this method the amount of air exchange per minute can be experimentally demonstrated to be greater than the normal air exchange of the individual, so that by it respiration can be maintained artificially for an indefinite time without the subject having the least desire to breathe naturally; I have myself so maintained it in one individual during a full hour. The experimental evidence (which I have given at length in the ‘ Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh,’ and which is also stated briefly in an appendix to the Report of the Com- mittee on Suspended Animation) leaves room for no uncertainty as to the relative efficiency of the several methods under discussion. Thus in one subject, a young man of twenty-three, whose natural respiration at the rate of thirteen per minute produced an air exchange per minute of 5850 c.c., the Silvester method gave only 2280 c.c.; the Marshall Hall method 3300 c.c.; the Howard method 4020 c.c.; and the prone-pressure method 6760 c.c., all being worked at the same rate as the natural respiration. The addition suggested by Hr. Bowles to the Marshall Hall method of raising one arm over the head has in my hands only rendered it still more difiicult to obtain a sufficient amount of air exchange ])er minute, on account of the extra time occupied by this additional complication. It is therefore very evident to me that Mr. Warrington Haward and Hr. Hewitt have not had any personal experience of this method, which they think superior to others. Let them try and keep a man going by its means without any aid from his own muscular mechanisms, and they will soon be undeceived as to its adequacy. With regard to the criticisms of Hr. Pembrey, in so far as they have not been dealt with in my remarks on those of the preceding speakers it will be found that they have been already anticipated and discussed in the paper itself: this is the case with that relating to the nervous mechanism of respiration during asphyxia. His remark that the prone-pressure method is not applicable to the new-born child, a remark repeated later by Hr. Silvester, is an obvious truism, for the only mechanical methods applicable in that case are inflation and Schultze’s swinging method. As to old people, the prone-pressure method is probably as applicable as any other, but in them lack of mobility of the chest walls must operate against all methods alike. In so far, however, as it produces pressure upon the abdominal contents, the prone-pressure method is independent of this lack of mobility, which cannot be affirmed of any of the other methods advocated.