The Uncertain Miracle

By Vance H. Trimble

Hyper (more) Baric (pressure).

 

This could be the most important book written in the 21st century about hyperbaric science. Inside, you'll discover the untold stories of the pioneers of the hyperbaric universe: Dr. George B. Hart, Dr. Orvil Cunningham, and other "giants" of early hyperbaric intervention, whose names and work must not disappear from history.

 

It was a day when the suffering patient took priority over institutional, profit-based protocol. At great personal cost, passion overrode permission, and these pioneers discovered a new frontier. Their scientific research and work in hyperbarics is as important to medicine as fire was to ancient peoples.

 

Follow the story of hyperbaric science from Compressed Air Therapy in 17th century Europe 20th century Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy, and Hyperbaric Atmosphere Saturation(HAS). Researched and written by Pulitzer Prize winner Vance Trimble in 1974, republished by permission in 2023. Complete and original content, edited for grammar and language.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Joseph Mabe
• Release date: Feb 1, 2024
• ISBN: 9780385045827

Book preview

PERMISSIONS

I am grateful to the following publishers, authors, and organizations for permission to quote from the works named below:

Proceedings of the Third International Conference of Hyperbaric Medicine, ed. Ivan W. Brown Jr., MD., and Barbara Cox. (1966) Reprinted with permission of the publisher, The National Academy of Sciences.

Hyperbolic Oxygenation and Its Clinical Value, Dr. N. G. Meijne, copyright1970 by Charles C. Thomas. Reprinted by permission of. Charles C. Thomas and the author.

The Compressed Air Bath and Its Uses in The Treatment of Disease, Dr. C. Theodore Williams, British Medical Journal, April 18, 1885. Reprinted by permission of British Medical Journal.

Everybody's Business—What's Next in Science by Floyd W. Parsons, The Saturday Evening Post, March 5, 1921. Reprinted by permission of The Saturday Evening Post.

The Cunningham 'Tank Treatment, Journal of The American Medical Association, Vol. 90 No. i8, May 5, 1928. Reprinted by permission of Journal of The American Medical Association.

Hyperbaric Oxygenation—Potentials and Problems (1963). Reprinted by permission of the publisher, The National Academy of Sciences.

The Hyperbaric Medicine Newsletter, Vols. I-VIII, ed. Dr. Harry J. Alvis. Reprinted by permission of the editor.

Clinical Hyperbaric Oxygenation with Severe Oxygen Toxicity, Drs. Robert L. Funson, Herbert A. Saltzman, Wirt W. Smith, Robert E. Whalen, Suydam Osterhout, and Roy T. Parker, The New England Journal of Medicine, Vol. 273 No. 8, Aug. 19, 1965. Reprinted by permission of The New England Journal of Medicine and the authors.

Directory of World-Wide, Shore-based Hyperbaric Chambers, Vols. I and II, January 1971. Reprinted by permission of Supervisor of Diving, United States Navy.

ISBN: 0-385-04582-4

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER  73-79721

COPYRIGHT © 1974 BY VANCE H. TRIMBLE

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I wish to express my gratitude to the many individuals and or­ganizations who freely gave information, and especially to Dr Harry J. Alvis of Buffalo, New York, and Dr. Cornelia M. Dettmer of Cincinnati, both of whom not only served as medical con­sultants but also reviewed the manuscript for technical accuracy, though neither should bear any responsibility for the author’s interpretations or conclusions.

For their substantial research contributions my sincere thanks to Dr. George B. Hart and Mrs. Alice Gaul, of Long Beach, Cali­fornia; to Dr. Eric P. Kindwall, Dr. Carl Zenz, and Dr. Edgar End, of Milwaukee; to Dr. Louis R. M. Del Guercio, Anthony Scala, Dr. Dennis R. Filippone, George S. Beakley, Bob Cornish, Mrs. Constance Warshoff, and Dr. James A. Hogan, of Livingston, New Jersey; to Dr. Julius H. Jacobson II, Dr. Howard A. Rusk, Dr. Theobald Reich, Leonard Diller, Ph.D., Myron Youdin, Miss Nancy Tuckerman, secretary to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, C. G. Coburn, program director of the John A. Hartford Foundation, of New York; to Dr. Jack Van Elk, Dr. Luke R. Pascale, Dr. Morris Fishbein, of Chicago; to Frank Chappell and Oliver Field of the American Medical Association; and to John T. Mahoney of the Vacudyne Corp., of Chicago.

To Wesley Peoples, Arthur Smith, and James Price, of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania; to Major William F. Long, of Dallas; to Dr. William F. Bernhard, Dr. James E. Drorbaugh, Jim Carr, Ross A. McFarland, Ph.D., William Keith, Ph.D., Herbert Shaw, Richard Wolfe of Harvard’s Countway Library, William J. Brennan of Children’s Medical Center, of Boston; to Dr. Alan P. Thal and Miss Helen Sims of Kansas City, Kansas; to Dr. Ralph Hall, Miss Merre Shane and Mrs. Charles Dennie, of Kansas City, Missouri; and to Dr. R. Adams Cowley and Jerome Touhy, of Baltimore, Maryland.

To Dr. Claude Hitchcock of Minneapolis, Minnesota; to Dr. John H. Turgeson of Madison, Wisconsin; to Dr. Herbert Saltzman and Joe Sigler of Duke University, of Durham, North Carolina; to Cliff Marr of Battelle Memorial Institute and Dr. Charles Billings, of Columbus, Ohio: to Dr. Albert R. Behnke of San Francisco; to Eleanor Jacobs, Ph.D., Dr. Edward H. Lanphier, of Buffalo, New York; to Dr. Sreedhar Nair and Richard Imbruce, Ph.D., of Norwalk, Connecticut; to Ruth Epstein of Cincinnati General Hospital Library, Dr. Saul Benison of the University of Cincinnati, James Blair, Jr, Mrs. Richard Kreuter, Dr. Eldridge Baker, of Cincinnati; to John Y. Brown, Sr., of Lexington and Louisville, Kentucky.

Also, to Senator Harrison Williams of New Jersey, Andy Rothman, LeRoy Goldman, Bill Oriole, Mrs. Everett M. Dirksen, Lynda L. Cahoon, John A. Blake, Ph.D., of the National Library of Medicine, Captain Ben Hastings, U. S. Navy, and Dr. Henry Gannon, of Washington, D.C.

My appreciation, too, for the helping hands lent by colleagues in the press: Mildred Whiteaker of the San Antonio (Texas) News-Express; Cruise Palmer of the Kansas City (Missouri)  Star; Arville Schaleben of the Milwaukee Journal; Richard Hollander of the Scripps-Howard Washington Bureau; Creed Black of the Philadelphia Inquirer; Tom Boardman and Bob Yonkers of The Cleveland (Ohio) Press; Joan Rice of the Akron (Ohio) Beacon-Journal; Julius Frandsen of United Press International, Washington, D.C.; Don Weaver of Worthington, Ohio; and Carl West,  Randy  Cochran,  and  Nancy  Taylor  of  The  Kentucky  Post staff.

The family of Dr. Orval J. Cunningham was gracious and generous with their time and historic memorabilia, for which I warmly thank his son Orval, Jr.,  of Natick, Massachusetts, daughter Dorothy (Mrs. Leslie N. II) Duryea, and widow Grace, both of Fullerton, California. Valuable help on this portion of the book was given by their friend H. J. Rand III, of Cleveland, Ohio.

My gratitude also for the assistance of my wife, Elzene; daughter, Carol Ann Weisenfeld, of Miami, Florida, and sister-in-law, Edwina Cline, of Houston, Texas. I am indebted to my editor, Diane Cleaver, for her patient and expert guidance.

For C. A. Dwyer, Jr., M.D.

...mantener los viejos amigos

INTRODUCTION

When It’s Life or Death

Magic in Your Blood

Le Bain d’Air Comprime

Dauntless Dr. Cunningham

Open Secret at Harvard

Patrick Kennedy’s Desperate Hours

And the Boom Goes On

Surgery, Heart Attack, Cancer, and Gangrene

Burns, Stroke, Carbon Monoxide

In the V.I.P. Spotlight

The Tank vs. Old Age

Side Effects—Sex and I.Q.

Poison . . . Fire . . . and Explosion!

Research and Government Money

The Experts Search for Answers

Directory of Hyperbaric Chambers in the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Puerto Rico

THE UNCERTAIN MIRACLE

By

Vance Trimble

Republished in 2023

By

I.P. Semmelweis Memorial Publications LLC

PREFACE

This is a book that has needed writing for a long time. Vance Trimble has not found this an easy nor simple matter. The required research has taken him into all manner of byways including locating elderly relatives and friends of certain individuals. Beyond this he has had to educate himself in the ways and mannerisms of the medical profession, first of all overcoming their built-in predisposition of negativism toward the reportorial craft. But Trimble is more than a craftsman. He was able to bring his reportorial skills, which are great, along with his unusual degree of humaneness into this scene.

As a practitioner and believer in this form of treatment I know he has dealt well with the essential facts. While this may not be the complete source book for historians, there can be no doubt the author has brought light to some murky corners of the background. His research files would be a compilation almost any medical library would be pleased to add to their collection. Above all he has brought a readable exposition to a much misunderstood area of current medical practice. Hyperbaric medicine is no fountain of youth nor raising from the grave exercise but there is a genuine role for this modality and Vance Trimble has contributed a highly interesting, pleasantly readable account of what the field can do and how it is done. My personal thanks go to Vance Trimble for having persisted in completing this formidable and needed document.

––––––––

Harry J. Alvis, M.D.

Submarine Medical Officer, USN

Associate Clinical Professor,

School of Medicine,

State University of New York at Buffalo

Consultant, Hyperbaric Medicine Veterans’ Administration Hospital Buffalo, New York

Millard Fillmore Hospital

Buffalo, New York

Foreword

I stand on the shoulders of giants! Pity the hapless souls who have not endlessly regaled themselves as children, immersed in hero worship of the great luminaries of yesteryear, the intellectual pillars of thought, of literature, of deed, the pioneers of science.

There are many names that we keep on the tip of the tongue, that writers carry on the lead of their pencil—Hippocrates, Darwin, Einstein, Pasteur. But what of the legions of unsung heroes—Manfred von Ardenne, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, Claude Bernard, Otto Warburg?

Indeed, Dr. Orval J. Cunningham was assuredly one of those unsung heroes.

Who amongst us has delved deeply into the works, into the minds, of these legends? In The Uncertain Miracle, published in 1974 by Vance Trimble, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1960 for investigative journalism, republished in 2023 by the International Hyperbaric Medical Foundation through the I.P. Semmelweis Memorial Publications, LLC, we take a deep dive (all puns intended) not only into the thoughts and work of Dr Cunningham, but also reveal a brief taste of the insufferable trials and tribulations he was subjected to as penalties for challenging medical orthodoxy.

Not because he was wrong, mind you, rather because he rescued people from needless suffering and terminal diseases using hyperbarics instead of pharmaceuticals. Reflecting his own personal experiences, Albert Einstein quipped, "Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. The mediocre mind is incapable of understanding the man who refuses to bow blindly to conventional prejudices and chooses instead to express his opinions courageously and honestly."

As a research scientist, my original antiaging, tissue and organ regeneration R&D over the past 51 years was built on a foundation of solid bedrock proffered by the original works of all the great minds captioned above, along with many more not listed. Condensation, amalgamation, contemplation, and integration of such a smorgasbord of originality breeds more original thought. We must not deceive ourselves. We must not allow suppression and censorship in any nuance nor context. We must not succumb to hubris. Science has barely scratched the surface of the way the universe works, of human health. All we must do is listen and pay close attention, to think deeply, and not be distracted by the extraneous noise and chatter of contemporary society. I have been richly blessed to be allowed to stand on the shoulders of giants! The possibilities remain limitless!

Humbly,

International Hyperbaric Medical Foundation

Dr Merrel Holley, DSc, President

&

The Tissue & Organ Regeneration Institute (a 501(c)3)

Antiaging, Tissue & Organ Regeneration

Dr Merrel Holley, DSc, Senior Research Scientist

Medical Advice Disclaimer

DISCLAIMER: THE IHMF DOES NOT PROVIDE MEDICAL ADVICE

The information, including but not limited to, text, graphics, images and other material contained on this website, publications and responses to questions are for informational purposes only, typically citing published research papers. No material provided from the IHMF or its agents is intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified healthcare provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition or treatment and before undertaking a new healthcare regimen, and never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have read on this website or responses to questions.

Forward

I entered the universe of hyperbaric science the way most people do: watching the movies and adventures of Jaques Cousteau, oceanaut, on Sunday nights. For a young boy raised in poverty by a single mom east of Los Angeles, CA, it was a glorious escape from life’s difficulties.

Years later, in college on the opposite coast, it was a natural progression to get trained and certified to dive off the coast of Gloucester, MA. My recreational diving became the nemesis for any tasty lobster I could find. Scuba diving in real life turned out to be a thousand percent better than anything books or television could only hint at. The overwhelming sense of well-being, adventure and the required focus and skill probably developed me more as a young man than all my other experiences combined. 

Many years later my mother was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease.

Thus began a highly emotional and desperate quest to help her. I quickly discovered the allowable medical approach to Parkinson’s was pretty much limited to a handful of expensive pills. The prognosis would always be her body adapting to the medication and the progression of the disease continuing.  After exhausting every known medical approach to helping her and not being satisfied with the go home and slowly die shaking or be a medicated zombie at the taxpayers' expense statements, I pursued HBOT, or Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy. 

Not surprisingly, HBOT for Parkinson’s Disease was denied by both doctors and insurance companies. Not that it couldn’t help, it was simply not on their allowable schedule. It took me many hours of frustrating conversations to understand that most doctors have been transitioned into providers, and providers only provide based on permission from a strange conglomeration of the American Medical Association, insurance companies, the Trial Lawyers Association of America, Big Pharma and to a secondary extent, directed academics at leading universities. 

I had pursued HBOT, not because of any study or recommendation, but because it was the closest thing to my diving experience where anytime I got below thirty feet in saltwater, I always felt wonderful. I felt great and had a mild euphoria for a day afterwards. I am a simple man in many ways. For me, if my body feels good, it is good.  My mother felt terrible all the time, her muscles ached constantly from non-stop tremors, her sleep was short and wretched, she was fighting depression, she couldn’t start and stop well, her balance was bad, and life was getting difficult. Medication merely masked her symptoms by giving her others. I would do anything to help her feel better. 

With the help of some wonderfully skilled friends over the course of a year I built a multi-place Hyperbaric Atmosphere Chamber. If I were to write about the process, expense, regulations, certifications etc., it would take an entire book. It is close to impossible for an individual to both safely and legally do it.  However, my day job at the time was pastoring a church and I knew how to pray. I also had an advantage that most people don’t: my friends build submarines, run nuclear power plants, build oil platforms, and I was surrounded with engineers and retiring scientists. One of my friends, Norman an inventor and accomplished welder, simply believed in what I was trying to accomplish and devoted himself to the immense project. It wouldn’t have happened without him. 

The first session of dry diving my mother to fifty-two feet for forty minutes at depth removed her muscle pain. The second dive ended her shaking for quite some time. By the fifth dive she walked better. In under ten dives I gave her back her car keys and she could use the stairs, get up and down from the floor with her grandkids, and teach Sunday School again.

My mother went ninety-percent symptom free for seven years, with no medication. She got her life back. If she did three sessions a week, her disease did not progress. Five sessions per week showed reversal.  To my extreme frustration, Hyperbaric Atmosphere Saturation (what I do) does not cure Parkinsons. But her doctor told me that he believed my system was the greatest palliative care in the United States for PD. 

Today I have ten staff members and multiple volunteers and my company, Hyperbaric Fitness of Swanzey, NH is averaging twenty-five to forty clients per day for dry diving. Non-Medical, Health and Wellness is our focus. The stem cell increase coupled with immune system support, breathing aid and detoxification that occurs in Hyperbaric Atmosphere has been a real-life health hack for our clients for eleven years. 

This book is of inestimable value. I read it for the first time in 2022, eleven years after I started my journey. I would be much further ahead by now if I had this knowledge. I very much identify with the early pioneers and doctors in this book as to the challenges they faced. Divers, doctors, researchers and inventors should all read this book for their knowledge base. The public should read it for its inspiration. 

Warning: It will take you into the universe of possibilities and your life may never be the same. 

Joseph Mabe, Owner 

Hyperbaric Fitness, LLC of Swanzey, NH 

1

WHEN IT'S LIFE OR DEATH

On a sunny afternoon in late March 1968, Dr. George B. Hart hurried along a second-floor corridor in the U. S. Naval Hospital in Long Beach, California. At precisely four by his watch, he turned into the south-wing assembly hall, his jaw out-thrust. Twenty or thirty others milled about finding seats for the Conference on Combat Casualties. Those who observed Hart’s entry understood the frustration reflected in his scowl, for the whole medical staff shared it.

They were grappling with a very tough case—the tall Marine corporal who had sunken, pleading eyes, a gaunt pain-wracked face, and a frail, rotting body. He was young, and should be getting well, but the doctors weren’t doing him any good. He was practically a living skeleton. His prospects were poor; the corporal was, in fact, dying.

Hart brusquely rapped the blackboard with a piece of chalk. As Chief of Surgery, this meeting was his show. He had initiated these monthly conferences the previous fall, with discussion limited to truly complicated cases coming in from the Vietnam battlefields. Hart was trying to achieve two goals: first, to find some better course of treatment for any war wounded not doing well under conventional therapy; and secondly, in that way to further the training of reservist physicians assigned to him.

Most of the doctors assembled before George Babe Hart were quite young. Only thirty-eight years old himself, he felt almost a graybeard in this company. From the University of Texas Medical School, he had gone directly into the Navy as a physician in 1956. Already he had served as Chief of Surgery at two other Navy installations, now held the rank of full commander and would advance by 1972 to captain.

Waiting for the doctors to settle down, Hart looked them over admiringly, impressed by the enormous storehouse of hard-earned medical knowledge collectively reposing in these minds. Yet their combined skill, he reflected ruefully, was doing precious damn little for Corporal James Joseph Helfer.

On his way to the assembly, Hart had looked in again on Helfer. In the six months since the corporal had been brought to Long Beach, Hart had seen him at least fifty times. Though gravely wounded, Helfer had arrived weighing about 160 pounds. Now he was a bony, shrunken human shell, barely 80 pounds!

At a signal from Hart, the orthopedist strode to the front and began slipping the patient’s latest X-ray films under the viewing screen clips. The Chief of Surgery sat down to watch and listen grimly, hopeful the upcoming discussion might somehow spawn a fresh clue for solving their baffling problem.

The orthopedic surgeon recited Helfer’s case history, Navy medical SOP, but practically everyone present already knew the full story. It had been reviewed at each previous Combat Casualty Conference, the most discussed case, the most stubborn, the most disappointing. For a dozen other complicated casualties, successful new treatments were devised; but this one defied the doctors’ finest efforts.

Helfer’s chart gave all the basics: age, twenty-two; height, six feet two; hometown, Covina, California. Wounded July 15, 1967, during skirmish in the mountains north of Khe Sanh. He was the gunner in a US Marine tank guarding the vital road to Hill 881 where an American radar outpost kept watch across the border into North Vietnam. Helfer climbed out of his tank, and instantly was hit in the lower back by an enemy rocket.

A buddy dragged him to cover, and a medic put compress bandages over gaping holes where the four-inch shell had gone through his body and called in a rescue helicopter. He was evacuated to Da Nang, where surgeons found extensive damage. His intestines were mangled, one kidney ruptured, multiple nerves severed or bruised, and his spine above the pelvis had been viciously scraped by the projectile.

The military doctors feared the rocket’s concussion might have done additional damage they couldn't then detect; but they patched him up fairly well, performing a colostomy because of the bowel trauma. He was sent aboard the hospital ship U.S.S. Sanctuary for a few weeks, then flown back to the United States, and admitted on September 16, 1967, to Long Beach Naval Hospital. Helfer had arrived in critical condition and, despite all the doctors could do, went steadily downhill. His primary wounds, fortunately, had generally healed. But the enemy rocket's assault on his backbone had brought on the present life-threatening complication. This was chronic osteomyelitis, a terrible disease that causes bone to literally rot and exude a putrid ooze through an open wound known as a sinus. Helfer’s lower spine was affected, specifically the fourth and fifth lumbar vertebrae and the sacrum. He had a large decubitus ulcer, a bedsore.

The Long Beach doctors began vigorous treatment at once. The orthopedist inserted a catheter into the sinus and irrigated the infected bones with antibiotic solutions. That had little effect. Helfer was given more antibiotics, steroids, hormones. He required one blood transfusion a week.

A special diet was prescribed to try to build up his weight, but he ran a fever and his condition continued to deteriorate. At the first Combat Casualty Conference, it was decided to try a sequestrectomy surgery to remove pockets of dead bone from the diseased area. This operation was performed not only once, but thrice.

Nothing