Iron lungs are the precursor to modern ventilators. They were developed to "breathe" for a person whose lungs had stopped functioning on their own. Invented in the 1920s, iron lungs became commonplace during the polio epidemics in the 1940s and 1950s and allowed countless patients to survive the outbreak. An iron lung is a non-invasive device that works by creating a negative pressure environment. A patient who is either too weak to breathe independently or has lost muscle control is placed into an airtight cylindrical steel chamber that encases their torso. As air is pumped out, the pressure drops, automatically causing a person's lungs to fill with air inhaled through the mouth and nose. Today's ventilators use an intubation tube to control the inflow of oxygen.
Apothecary kits were once standard equipment for any doctor or healer. Unlike today, a patient couldn't go to the corner drugstore to fill a prescription. If a patient needed medicine, a doctor needed to have the drugs and mixtures on hand. Apothecary kits served that purpose, allowing physicians to transport dozens of glass vials filled with herbs, plant extracts, chemicals, mixtures and other healing potions and ingredients. The pharmaceutical cases held dozens of concoctions that were fixed in place by cloth or leather straps. Today, original apothecary kits--especially the ornate versions designed in the 1800s--are collector's items. Well-to-do physicians often carried expensive mahogany or leather cases with carved or inlaid decoration to their patients' homes.
A clinical axial thermometer served the same function as a modern medical thermometer: It provided an empirical measure for a patient's body temperature. For centuries, people used a palm to the forehead to detect a fever and clinical thermometers weren't widely used until the late 1800s. Like modern thermometers, these gadgets measured body temperature using a mercury-enclosed wand that was protected by layers of glass. Unlike their modern counterparts, clinical axial thermometers were cumbersome two-part devices connected by a cord. The calibrated measure was mounted to a piece of wood or ivory marked with the temperature increments. The temperature sensitive part, which was about the size of a sunglass case, went under a patient's armpit until the physician got a rough reading. By comparison, today's digital-read thermometers are a significant improvement.