Alvan L Barach Talks with Thomas L Petty

Abstract

Dr Alvan L Barach, born in 1895, became a pioneer in pulmonary medicine from his earliest days as a physician in New York City—around 1920. From that time until his death in December 1977, Dr Barach never left his chosen frontier—doing the first or some of the earliest work in oxygen therapy, clinical use of blood gases, pressure breathing, helium-oxygen breathing, problems of dyspnea, diaphragmatic breathing, pursed-lip breathing, aerosol bronchodilation, and pulmonary function testing—sharing his findings in some 300 articles and books and book chapters.

Dr Thomas L Petty, born in 1932, is midway in a career that resembles Dr Barach's. Now Professor of Medicine and Head of the Division of Pulmonary Sciences at the University of Colorado Medical Center in Denver, Dr Petty has crusaded for the clinical use of arterial puncture, demonstrating the safety of that procedure in earlier, skeptical years, was one of the developers of PEEP, elucidated the concept of the adult respiratory distress syndrome, and has long been actively interested in rehabilitation of the pulmonary cripple. Like Dr Barach, he has written and published extensively. Not long before Dr Barach's death, he sat and talked about his career and about some of his personal philosophy—with Dr Petty. Their words were preserved on tape for Breon Laboratories' Perspectives in Pulmonary Medicine series—and Respiratory Care here publishes a transcript based on the taped conversation between these two pioneers—Alvan Barach and Thomas Petty.