Drinker and Shaw constructed a crude mansized model, only to store it away in an old warehouse. Then, on Friday, the 13th of September in 1929, a man named Barrett Hoyt was dying of polio in the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital. Since his breathing muscles were paralyzed, the doctor in charge decided to chance Drinker's respirator. The lung had only been tried once before, and then, the patient had died of pneumonia.

Lung Saves First Life

Hoyt was barely breathing when the bulky equipment reached the hospital. They put him in the machine, started the motor, and in a few minutes, Hoyt was breathing regularly. Today he is alive and well.

His was the first of many thousands of lives to be saved by Drinker's machine. Hoyt lay in the lung for four weeks, during which Drinker had many anxious moments as to whether the respirator would hold up.

Important as this work on respiration is, it is only part of what the Medical and Public Health faculties are doing on the care of polio victims and the disease's cure.

Most revolutionary in the latter field is the work of a team of Harvard researchers at the Children's Medical Center. These men have found a new, less dangerous, less expensive way of growing polio virus in many type of human tissue. The discovery may aid in the development of a vaccine against the disease.

Vaccine in the Future

Such a vaccine is now only a plan for the future, the researchers claim. Meanwhile, they have been able to cultivate the three strains of the polio germ representing the types of virus. They can now test a patient inexpensively to determine which type of virus is the cause of his disease.

Immunization experiments on mice are being done by John E. Gordon, head of the Department of Epidemiology in the School of Public Health. He found that litters of immunized mothers were protected against mild forms of the disease for two months after their birth. Virus administered after that time had no crippling effects; thus the mice were immunized against the disease and could transmit some of this protection to their off-springs.

In the care and treatment of certain categories of the disease, the Harvard doctors are doing more work than is being done anywhere else in the country.

The Children's Medical Center, run by the University, is the nucleus of these activities. Several wards in the hospital are devoted to polio victims. During polio epidemics, one-third of the state's immobilized cases are cared for there, and more than two-thirds come in regularly for treatment and exercise.

To aid crippled victims to walk again, the Orthopedic Department of the Medical School takes over when the patient has passed the crisis stages of the disease. By X-rays and study of the growth of a child's normal leg, orthopedists can tell how long the stunted leg will be when it stops its retarded growth. They operate on the good leg when it reaches this length, removing a portion of the bone so that it will stop growing. When the afflicted leg has grown as much as it can, both legs will be the same length, enabling the child to walk almost as easily as a normal person.

In addition, surgeons graft muscles onto bones whose natural muscles have been deformed by the disease and plant nerves and tendons in paralyzed portions of the body.

Harvard's earliest contribution to the after-care of polio victims was the Infantile Paralysis Commission, established in 1916, and now known as the Massachusetts Infantile Paralysis Clinic.

Located in the Children's Medical Center, the clinic treats those who are recovering from the disease, gives them exercises, and teaches them to use their constricted muscles again. During 1949, a peak year, the clinic handled 1,895 new patients. It is not officially a part of the Medical School but is completely staffed by it.