Rarely Seen: Iron Lung

Here at The College of Physicians of Philadelphia, our own Mütter Museum is preparing an exhibit entitled Rarely Seen: Hidden Collections of the Mütter Museum. Visitors will have the chance to see some rarely or never before seen items. Too large to display in the permanent museum galleries, these fascinating objects will briefly have a home in our temporary exhibit space.  Of particular interest to the History of Vaccines project is an iron lung manufactured by J.H. Emerson Co. as well as  a bacterial incubator used by Robert Austrian, MD, a pioneer researcher in pneumococcal disease and developer of the polysaccharide pneumococcal vaccine. This exhibit will be on display from October 2010 through January 2011.

Over the next few days we’ll post more pictures of the iron lung along with the tale of how it came to the Mütter Museum.