First Use of the Iron Lung / First Oktoberfest began - October 12

An iron lung was used for the first time on this day in 1928. / On this day in 1810, the first Oktoberfest began after the marriage of Crown Prince Ludwig and Princess Therese of Saxe-Hildburghausen.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, y'all, Eve's here. Today's episode contains not just one,
but two nuggets of history. These are coming from the
T D I h C Vault, so you'll also here
to hosts. Consider it a double feature. Enjoy the show.
Welcome to This Day in History Class from how Stuff
Works dot com and from the desk of Stuff you
Missed in History Class. It's the show where we explore

(00:21):
the past one day at a time with a quick
look at what happened today in history. Hello and welcome
to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and it's October twelve.
The iron lung was used for the first time on
this day in The iron lung is mostly associated with polio,

(00:41):
and polio is a viral disease. It primarily affects children
under the age of five, although obviously not exclusively children
under the age of five. In addition to symptoms like
fever and headache and vomiting, polio attacks the nervous system
and it causes paralysis. Because if it's typically young, patience
and the way the disease progresses into paralysis, it's also

(01:04):
been known as infantile paralysis. Polio still exists today and
there is still no cure for it, but it is
preventible with vaccines. So while polio is rare to non
existent in some parts of the world, today it's endemic
in a few others, and it can spread from one
part of the world to the other sometimes as polio
progresses and it causes paralysis. It paralyzes muscles that are

(01:27):
associated with breathing. It affects a person's ability to breathe,
and before the introduction of the iron lung, this was
usually fatal often but not all the time. The paralysis
caused by polio is temporary, so people thought if there
was some kind of way to keep patients breathing during
this paralysis, but they might recover afterward. But they just

(01:48):
didn't know how to do that, how to keep people breathing,
and that brings us to the iron lung. The iron
lung is more properly called the negative pressure ventilator. It
looks like a big metal cylinder, large enough for a
person's whole body minus their head to fit into, so
it's from the neck down. Typically, there is a bed
inside of the tube that can be slid in and

(02:10):
out of the cylinder, which allows the patient to be
removed and returned when necessary. There are windows and portholes
and the sides of the cylinder that let caregivers touch
the person inside and adjust their bedding, generally care for
them while they're in the respirator. The iron lung works
by alternately lowering and raising the pressure inside of this chamber,

(02:32):
so when the pressure is lowered, air is drawn into
the lungs to the patient's nose and mouth, and then
when the pressure is raised, the air is pushed back
out and that forces the patient to exhale. It also
allows them to speak during that exhaled breath, so for
a person who's using an iron lung, speech is usually
timed to the machines cycle of breathing. The iron lung

(02:52):
was developed by Philip Drinker, who at a time was
an assistant professor in the Department of Ventilation and Illumination
at the Harvard School of Public Health. He developed the
idea of creating some kind of a ventilator for polio
patients when he went to Children's Hospital in Boston. He
was trying to figure out a temperature control issue in
a room that was used to care for premature infants,

(03:13):
and while he was there he saw children with polio
who were just struggling to breathe. The device that he
developed was at first called the Drinker respirator, and it
was used for the first time in a clinical trial
at Children's Hospital, and that trial started on October twel
This first iron lung was a lot boxier than the

(03:33):
tube like respirators that were used later, and it was
powered by two household vacuum cleaners. It completely changed the
world of polio treatment. Though. It allowed patients with temporary
paralysis to keep breathing until their bodies recovered and they
were able to breathe on their own again, and it
provided ongoing breathing support for people whose paralysis was permanent. Today,

(03:56):
iron lungs have almost completely been replaced by other respiration technologies,
but as often there were only about ten in use
around the world. Still, mostly there were was people who
had survived polio in childhood back decades ago. You can
learn more about the iron lung and the contexts in
which it has been used in the November one episode

(04:19):
of Stuff You Missed in History Class called polio the
dread Disease, and in the January episode Ed Roberts and
the Independent Living movement thanks to Terry Harrison for all
her audio work on this podcast, and you can subscribe
to the Stay in History Class on Apple Podcasts, Google
Podcasts and we're real to get your podcast. You can
tune in tomorrow for the return of a language. Hey y'all,

(04:49):
I'm Eves and you're listening to This Day in History Class,
a podcast for people interested in the big and small
moments in history. The day was October twelfth, eighteen ten.
Crown Prince Ludvik married Princess Teresa of Sexa Hildeberghausen, and

(05:12):
the citizens of Munich were invited to celebrate the occasion
in the fields in front of the city gate. This
celebration is the origin of october Fest, a festival and
fair in Munich that's held annually and attracts visitors from
around the world. In the days after the marriage, the
people of Bavaria gathered in front of the zen Linger tour,

(05:33):
a gate leading to Munich. The festivities in the inaugural
year of october Fest included a feast in horse races,
which around forty thousand people attended. The fields where the
celebration was held had been dubbed Terse and Visa, which
means Teresa's Meadow after the crown princess. Today, locals often

(05:54):
called the Celebration of Visan, after the nickname for the
fair grounds. October Fest was held again in eighteen eleven,
including horse races, drinking and feasting, but that year an
agricultural show was also part of the festivities. The eighteen
thirteen october Fest was canceled because of the Napoleonic Wars,

(06:15):
but after that the october Fest began to grow. In
the beginning, there weren't many amusements to choose from the
first carousel and two swings were set up in eighteen eighteen.
After eighteen nineteen, october Fest was planned as an annual event,
and more beer stands and attractions were added. The duration
of the festival was lengthened and moved to the end

(06:37):
of September to take advantage of longer and warmer days.
Ludovic became king of Bavaria in eighteen twenty five and
Teresa became queen, and they remained so until Ludvig abdicated
and his son Maximilian the Second took the throne in
eighteen forty eight. Still october Fest continued, though it has

(06:58):
been canceled in many years because of war, cholera, hyper inflation,
and other things that disrupted the normal course of events.
Electricity began powering the festival around eighteen eighty, and beer
tents were introduced years after that. Beer has been served
in glass mugs at october Fest since eighteen nine. Two

(07:19):
horse races are no longer featured, but the agricultural show
still happens once every four years. October Fest grew to
include amusements like bowling alleys and dance floors, and cities
outside of Germany that were home to many German descended
residents began hosting october Fest celebrations based on the original
event held in Munich. Though october Fest is celebratory, in

(07:43):
the early nineteen thirties, the festival did serve as a
vehicle for Nazi propaganda and nationalistic pride, and Jewish people
were forbidden from working on the fairgrounds. Now, october Fest
begins in late September and last until the first Sunday
in October, and parades kick off the festivities. Though the

(08:03):
event has expanded to include concerts, theater and other productions,
and it draws millions of people, it's still an important
part of Bavarian culture. I'm Eaves Deep Coote and hopefully
you know a little more about history today than you
did yesterday. If you're hungry for more history, you can
find us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at t d

(08:26):
i h C Podcast, and you can send your thoughts
are comments to us at this Day at I heart
media dot com. Thanks for listening. We'll see you here
again tomorrow with another episode. For more podcasts from my

(08:52):
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