Club Lunchtime Meeting

The speaker today will be Dr. John Clegg, a Consultant at Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust.

With Polio very much in our minds following World Polio Eradication Day in October, Dr. Clegg will talk about George Thomas Smith-Clarke, a British engineer who devised the Smith-Clarke Baby cabinet respirator which was made here in Warwick by the Cape Engineering Co. Ltd., between 1956 and 1970 and was a type of iron lung.

First developed to treat gas inhalation victims, iron lungs were subsequently used to treat patients whose chest muscles were paralysed from diseases such as polio. Patients were encased in the cabinet.   Air at alternating pressures was pumped into the chamber causing the lungs to inflate and deflate so the person could breathe.

The advances since that time have seen enormous strides towards the eradication of Polio world-wide, spear-headed by Rotary and the World Health Organisation,