While flying for pleasure from Shanghai to Peiping early last year, Frederick B. Snite Jr., son of a wealthy Chicago small-loan financier, developed infantile paralysis. A few hours after he went to Peiping's Union Medical College Hospital he was paralyzed from the neck down. He could not move a muscle to breathe and would have suffocated in a few minutes had the hospital not had one of the few artificial respirators in the Orient.
Fred Snite was laid in this machine. Then he was obliged to learn an utterly new mode of life, which he learned so well that last week, still in his respirator, he could begin a 9,000-mi. voyage by truck, train and ship from Peiping to Chicago.
The artificial respirator is a casket-like steel box 74 in. long, 65 in. high, 44 in. wide. At the front end is a rubber ruff through which Fred Snite's head projects face up, like a mystic's dream of bodiless intelligence. Within, on a sheeted mattress, lies his flaccid, wasted body covered with a night dress.
Fifteen times every minute a suction pump creates a slight vacuum within the respirator. This lifts Fred Snite's chest and pulls one pint of fresh air into his lungs. When the pump releases the vacuum, his chest falls and he exhales. Every time the machine inhales for him, the rubber ruff hugs his neck, and it was a long time before he learned to ignore the sensation of being throttled 21,600 times a day. Another annoyance to be ignored was the incessant throbbing of the pump. But he quickly learned to control his tongue and prevent its being sucked into his throat like a cork at every inhalation.
His supine posture compels him to drink and swallow in time with the pump and to manage his epiglottis so that nothing but air is sucked into his lungs. Otherwise, he would certainly develop pneumonia and die. To reduce the danger of germs getting into his lungs, his two Chinese nurses wear gauze over their mouths and noses when they brush his teeth, shave him, wipe his nose, or deal otherwise with his head.
In the sides of the respirator are portholes through which nurses can serve Fred Snite with a bed pan, give him the enemas he constantly requires because his abdominal muscles do not function, bathe and massage him, change his bed and personal linen.
For diversion Fred Snite has adjustable mirrors rigged over his upturned face. These enable him to read, play games and to see his meals when they are placed on a table immediately back of his head. When a page of print is laid with its top at his hair, two mirrors enable him to read precisely as though the type were directly before his eyes. A single mirror turns the type upside down for him, but like a printer he can read it that way, too, with great facility. Another new accomplishment: he speaks Chinese.