| The first pressurized room used
to treat health problems was built by an Englishman
named Henshaw in 1662; however, it was not until
more than a century later in 1788, that compressed
hyperbaric air was put to large scale use in a
diving bell for underwater industrial repairs
of an English bridge. |
| A French iron shop in 1834 built the
first hyperbaric tank under direction of a physician
named Dr. Junod. A copper sphere five feet in diameter
with the appropriate viewports and compressed air
fittings was used successfully with many patients.
Hyperbaric enthusiasm spread among the European
countries during the next 40 years. Sick people
came from America to try the new therapy. |
 |
| The first North American hyperbaric
chamber was built in 1860. Progress continued
through the early 1900s.
In 1918, Dr. Orval Cunningham considered the
difference between people living or dying through
the flu epidemic in the Rocky Mountains.
He noticed people in the valley fared better
than people in the mountains. He reasoned that
denser air in the valley helped people fight the
infection. Cunningham had an 8 foot by 30 foot
hyperbaric chamber built next to his medical clinic.
Good outcomes with patients suffering from pneumonia
encouraged him to build other chambers. Cunnningham
built the world's largest functional hyperbaric
chamber, a 64 foot steel sphere "hyperbaric
hospital" with five floors of living space.
The Great Depression of the 1930s ended his project
and the steel was scrapped for the war effort
in the 1940s.
Harvard Medical School had a hyperbaric chamber
built in 1928. It provided a university based
medical research program. In the last four decades,
great stride in HBO2 research has raised the value
of this unique therapy. University studies have
expanded the list of conditions usefully treated
with compressed oxygen.
Physicians used to ask, "Can it work?"
Now they ask, "How much is needed to completely
work?"
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