1,846 Comments for Linton State Hospital

after 10 years as a nurse I have never seen an iron lung, or even heard of one

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_lung


that is creepy, I will do further research.

motts,, motts,,

There is one more older iron lung in ((worse shape than these that he is still looking for. I hope to find an authentic electro-shock therapy device in somewhere other than a museum, myself.))
they are not museum peices, I am a nurse and have seen it first hand. I was a new grad, you hook them up, to monitor their heart, connect them to a vent, give them a drug so they can't move. and then they shock them. weird, 15 to 30 min later they are talking to you.
weirdest thing that I have ever done in nurseing... it just felt sooooooooo wrong.

I bet the mirror is so they can look outside. gads..how awfull that must have been

oh god, I think I just figured it out.
mouth to mouth, or some sort of bellows.

ewwwwww

ok that answers how they reached in, but when they reached in. how did the patient keep breathing? where there something like really stiff gloves inside these holes? If the patient was very heavy it would take alot. of suction to get air into the lungs. Heck you might even end up with a whole body hicky..
that is just way to awful to even think about.

just think of not being able to breath, the buzz of the pump. the sucking feeling on your body. the hope that air will enter your lungs. the pause, the suction lets off.
your hungry, you have to go to the bath room. the buzz of the pump. the next breath. 24 hours a day. the bed changes, the baths, the buzz of the pump and the next welcome breath.
your chapped neck. your sore body. you can move, you can fight. the buzz of the pump and that next breath.. you try to scream and all that comes out is a soft moan. Your body wasting away. laying in your own filth. the buzz.... I have no idea of how they cleaned up the patient. how they must have had to talk to them to stave off insanity. Being a nurse on one of those wards would be so hard. you would have to give 110 percent or get hard, very cold and hard to just work there. wow, I think I might cry.
I just can't imagine.

sorry that Picture is so awsome I fell into it. I can actually feel what it might be like to lay in it, as a nurse to take care of some one that is laying in it..

brovo.. mr motts. as a nurse there is not much that jumps out and grabs my soul like that just did.

Thats insane!
I want to go there so bad!

In uni I had a lecturer who remembered these machines when he did rotations. He would tell us that the whistling of these machines in a dark ward at night was one of the creepiest things he had ever heard.

psych one,

SMA is a pretty rare disease and few folks have heard of it unless they have a family member affected with it. The reason I asked Henry L. about it is that negative air pressure vents are hardly used any more except by people with post-polio syndrome or SMA. There are a handful of other conditions and diseases that might result in the need for a device such as this, but they are generally even more rare than those two.

Thanks again Lynne, i am just medical term challenged. ;<)

Sorry - spinal muscular atrophy.
http://www.fsma.org/

Lynne,
please excuse my ignorance, but what is SMA ?

Henry L,

SMA or post-polio?

I use a smaller iron lung called a port a lung, but I have used these ones before.

Here's a great mini-arcticle regarding the Iron Lung at Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_lung

I was intrigued with the antique one they show that was in use from 1950s until the patient's death in 2003 - it was then donated to the Center for Disease Control Museum. I did not until this moment know that they had a museum!

What I'm not clear on is whether the patients used it only when sleeping (i.e. reduced respiratory function) or needed it 24x7 - or did it vary by patient?