“If you have always done it one way, it is probably wrong…”
Charles Kettering
What we have here is Sauerbruch chamber. It is a hermetically sealed negative pressure chamber. It allows thoracic surgery to be performed without a fatal collapse of the lungs upon opening the chest. It was was developed by German surgeon Ferdinand Sauerbruch. Not much of a clinician, Sauerbruch was sent by his bosses down to the animal research labs, safely away from patients. Sauerbruch had an idea to solve the main obstacle to progress in thoracic surgery. He struggled for several years to make his contraptions work. Getting the seals right was tricky, and early attempts killed a number of dogs and it would seem at least one elderly, frail woman. By 1904 the kinks seemed to have been ironed out and his Professor performed a successful thoracotomy on a very prominent opera singer. Sauerbruch’s principle was sound. Maintain a pressure difference between the atmosphere and the pleural cavity and respiration will continue with the thorax open. It just turns out to be way more simple and reliable to put a cuffed tube into the trachea and blow. #dontsuckblow #letsmakelemonade
Pen Paint and Scalpel 