An inquiry into the phenomena attending death by drowning and the means of promoting resuscitation in the apparently drowned : report of a committee appointed by the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society.
- Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society of London
- Date:
- 1904
Licence: In copyright
Credit: An inquiry into the phenomena attending death by drowning and the means of promoting resuscitation in the apparently drowned : report of a committee appointed by the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.
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![is the fact that it is difficult to obtain a glass bell-jar which is trul_y cylindrical, so that the readings must vary somewhat with the immersion of the bell-jar. The other objection is more serious, and arises from the swing which is imparted to such a balanced bell-jar by the entrance and exit of air—a swing Avhich, if the movements are to be as rapid as the normal rate of respiration, would mate- rially detract from the accuracy of the measurements, and even at slower rates serve to introduce a considerable but unknown error. In place of the balanced bell-jar a spirometer has been employed in the later experiments (Fig. 2). This spirometer, which is graduated in litres and tenths of a litre, is fitted with the excentric devised by Marcet for keeping the inverted cylinder exactly balanced at all positions of immersion. The air of respiration is passed from the mouth-piece or mask into the spirometer through a water-valve, whilst another similar valve serves to admit air to the mouth-]Diece. The amount of air which is pumped by any given method of artificial respiration through the lungs and into the bell- jar in the space of a minute is read off upon the graduated scale, or can be recorded upon a slowly moving cylinder. The rate of artificial respiration is that which has been previously determined to be the normal rate of the individual who is to be the subject of the experiment, and who is first instructed to breathe naturally into the spirometer through the valves for a sufficient number of minutes to ensure a fairly accurate average of rate. In this way also the normal amount of air exchange per minute for the individual can be determined at the same time, and may serve for comparison with the amount of air exchange per minute obtained by the methods investigated. For exact comparison of the several methods it is im- portant that both the operator and the subject of the experiment should be the same in all the experiments. It IS also important to make use of a subject who, by prac- tice, has acquired the faculty of remaining absolutely 5](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21458613_0071.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
