Time running out for one of last US iron lung users
UNITED STATES There are many nights when Martha Lillard is plagued by dreams that she cannot breathe.
Her heart beats wildly and she wakes up restless.
For Lillard, 69, it is not an idle fear.
She is one of the last three people in America believed still to be using an iron lung – but she does not know how much longer the respirator she has relied on since falling ill from polio in 1953 will continue to work.
A crucial part of the machine – an airtight collar that keeps the respirator’s pressure chamber sealed – has begun to leak. The company that made her iron lung, however, has long since stopped producing the part.
‘‘I am really fearful of running out of collars,’’ Lillard said. ‘‘I only have one more left.’’
Luckily, the internet is coming to her rescue. A news story about her plight has encouraged altruistic tinkerers from as far away as China to pitch in to build her the relevant part. Through Twitter, do-it-yourself builders have dug up old patents for the part and planned how their modern 3D printers and laser cutters could replicate the collar.
Iron lungs lined hospital rooms as polio epidemics raged in Britain and America during the 1940s and 50s. The device is a metal cannister that uses negative pressure to take over respiration for patients.
The first was built in 1928 in Boston. A British version was invented by the Aberdeen doctor Robert Henderson in 1933. At the peak of the polio epidemic, when 58,000 cases were reported a year, Philips Respironics, the maker of Lillard’s machine, manufactured thousands of iron lungs and parts. Production dropped off after the polio vaccine was developed in 1955 and the company now has only 10 collars left.
Lillard said she could buy only two, for US$200 each. She has relied for years on friends and neighbours near her home in central Oklahoma to fix her machine when problems arose.
Naomi Wu, a 3D printing enthusiast in Shenzhen, China, had never heard of an iron lung until reading Lillard’s story. She claimed that her predicament could be easily solved by makers, the term used to describe enthusiasts.
‘‘Ms Lillard is what we would call an auntie in China,’’ Wu, 23, said. ‘‘She has no children to take care of her and it is such a very small request. It would be terrible not to try.’’
Small-scale production tools such as 3D printers are adept at creating specialised items that can be tweaked with software capable of designing the customised products.
Enthusiasts predict that it will
‘ I am really fearful of running out of collars. I only have one more left.’ MARTHA LILLARD
bring about a third industrial revolution. Makers like Wu are being paid by sponsors to make prototypes.
Wu said that Lillard’s collar was made from a thick elastic but a wider range of materials besides wood, plastic or metal could be used. The most difficult step was to get the proper measurements, she said, and hoped to be in touch with Lillard. - The Times