ABSTRACT
The doctors believed that the paralysis was caused by poliomyelitis. The girl whose life was saved at the Radcliffe Infirmary was one of the first in whom intermittent positive-pressure ventilation was used for a condition other than poliomyelitis. There is no doubt that it was the experience gained in the 1952 Copenhagen poliomyelitis epidemic that led directly to the development of intensive care. This work provided the foundation for the nursing care now used in intensive care units. It is the continual monitoring of all aspects of the patient's condition that characterizes intensive care today. By the mid-1960s smaller four to eight-bed intensive care units were being developed in district general hospitals, and during the next decade mechanical ventilation became a routine treatment for all types of severe respiratory failure, whether it was due to pneumonia, head injury, widespread sepsis, shock, heart failure or pulmonary oedema.
