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Robert Henderson

Clatt, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, 1902 - 1999

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About MeThe son of the village blacksmith in Clatt, Aberdeenshire, Robert Henderson started work as an apprentice motor mechanic. Spotting his potential, one of his teachers arranged special tuition enabling Robert to attend the University of Aberdeen to study medicine. Robert’s interest in intensive care led him to build the UK’s first ‘iron lung’ at Aberdeen City Hospital.

It was during a visit to America that he first saw an iron lung in action and was inspired to build his own version. He returned to Aberdeen and set to work using materials from local firms, including portholes from ship chandlers. In 1933, working with a small team at Aberdeen City Hospital, Robert designed and built the first iron lung in the UK. Enabling patients to breathe when normal muscle control had been lost, Henderson’s model was put to the test just four weeks after it had been constructed when it saved the life of a ten year-old boy from New Deer who was suffering with poliomyelitis, or post-polio syndrome. Iron lungs were used extensively at the height of polio outbreaks in the 1940s and 1950s, helping patients with paralysed lungs to breathe and saving countless lives.