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Vital Capacity

The life of Dr. John Hutchinson

Robert Primhak

KEY SELLING POINTS
The first complete biography of John Hutchinson, the inventor of spirometry (measurement of lung
function).
Explores his meteoric rise to international fame and his decision to leave for a picaresque life in the
goldfields of Australia.
Also explores the early history of miners’ strikes, the development of germ theory as a cause of disease, and
the beginnings of respiratory epidemiology.

What makes a man abandon his family and his successful professional life for the goldfields of
Australia?

John Hutchinson left the coalfields of 19th Century Tyneside to become a surgeon, a physician and a pioneer
of chest medicine. His research on lung capacity using his newly-designed machine received international
acclaim. And then, just as the pinnacle of professional success was within his reach, he cast it all aside and
travelled to Australia as a ship’s surgeon. He was involved in the first large-scale miner’s strike, colliery
disasters, navigated the chaos of medical education in the early 19th century, invented the spirometer, and did
some meticulous research. He then travelled to Melbourne in the early days of the Australian gold rush, and on
to the goldfields of Victoria, before moving on to Fiji. Artist, sculptor, musician, and engineer, Hutchinson was
a man of many parts, and his design for a spirometer survived until modern times, as did his term for
maximum breathable air: vital capacity. In this book a renowned respiratory specialist discusses some of the
other factors that influenced his life, including some crucial misconceptions about the causes of disease.

Dr Robert Primhak worked for nearly forty years as a paediatrician, specialising in chest disease. He was
President of the British Paediatric Respiratory Society and Director of Assessment Director of the European
Respiratory Society. His interest in John Hutchinson stems from his own doctoral research on spirometry

Publication Date: 28th July 2024 £12.99 ISBN: 9781805144618
Thema subject category: DNBT – Biography: science, technology and medicine
paperback 198 x 129 mm 200 pp Portrait Author location: Sheffield

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