Medicine: The Criminal's Track

For a suffocating victim of respiratory poliomyelitis, help in breathing may not be enough. He must be helped to cough as well, in order to clear out the mucus accumulating in his paralyzed lungs. Last week in Houston, a group of polio researchers was told of a machine that both breathes and coughs for its occupant. This "lung" operates by means of a gadget that permits it to explode a sudden spurt of air against the patient's chest. It has passed its first laboratory tests. To perfect his gadget, Columbia University Researcher Alvan L. Barach got $8,300 from the March of...

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