Word: guns
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Harrison P. Hagemeyer, 62, a retired lab machinist, took on the job, for a good personal reason, and made the gun. Last week the Navy was confident that eventually it will save many lives...
...behind the gun was Georgetown University's Neurosurgeon John P. Gallagher, who wanted a safe way to treat aneurysms in the brain. Aneurysms are like blisters in tubeless tires: at a weak spot in its wall, an artery balloons out. The stretched wall is so thin that any rise in blood pressure caused by excitement or strain may burst it. Occasionally and unpredictably, the break is self-sealing and the scar may make the artery wall stronger than before, but more often a fatal flood of blood is spilled into the brain cavity. Usually, the aneurysm first develops...
...destroy the aneurysm with no risk of bleeding, he wanted to clot all the blood inside it. To make the blood clot, he needed to get a foreign body into it-such as a hair. And to get the hair in without disturbing the aneurysm, he needed a hair gun. So the Navy made him an air hair gun. It is a muzzle-loader, works on air at 50 lbs. pressure...
...hair, though thin, had to be stiff. Dr. Gallagher tried hair from the heads of Orientals. No good. He tried coarse eyebrow hairs. Not much better. Then he found that hog's hair was scaly enough to cause clotting, and stiff enough to be fired from the gun. So is hair from a horse's tail...
Machinist Hagemeyer jumped at the chance to make the lifesaving gun because his own son died of a brain aneurysm at the age of 32. Other neurosurgeons have not yet had a chance to try the new technique because Dr. Gallagher's gun is the only one in existence. But he has already had requests for hair guns from interested colleagues...