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Published On September 22, 2005
TECHNOLOGY
Treating TB
What was once treated with a lung compression device is now solved by antibiotics.
Pneumothorax, one of the oldest known surgeries for lung disease, can be traced to the Hippocratic era. But until the nineteenth century, the treatment meant cutting a hole in the patient’s chest and injecting air, often causing infection or even death. Then, in 1882, the Italian physician Carlo Forlanini invented the artificial pneumothorax apparatus. The machine forced air into the chest through a sterilized needle connected to a water manometer, which allowed the physician to accurately measure the pressure and volume of the introduced air and ensure the right amount of lung compression. Patients could visit “pneumo” weekly to have air collapse their diseased lung, pushing together the walls of the tubercular cavities and allowing nature’s healing process—fibrous tissue growth—to take place. The method was tenuous, depending largely on each individual’s body defense system, and was finally superseded in the mid-twentieth century by antibiotics and chemotherapy.
Dispatches

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Could This One Change Help Curb the Opioid Crisis? To prescribe an effective bridge to addiction treatment, emergency physicians must get special training and receive a waiver. Making that process easier—or eliminating the requirement altogether—could make a big impact.

One Thing Leads to the Next Robert Lefkowitz is best known for revealing the mechanism behind hundreds of drugs in use today. But he thinks of himself as a storyteller first and has a new book out to make his case.

Podcast: The Research Year That Was Medical research labs have faced a difficult stretch of closed buildings and competing priorities. Yet they have also produced milestone discoveries—and not only on COVID-19.

The Shape of Us Two milestone discoveries in protein modeling promise to change the fundamentals of drug discovery.

Universal Flu Vaccines Move Forward In the shadow of coronavirus vaccine development, another vaccine was making solid progress.

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