Breath-taking Moment

A baby named Edwin Peter Apman, of Brooklyn, did not take his first breath last week until 90 minutes after he was born. This was far better than the late Harry Houdini's record under water (three and a half minutes). The scene of Edwin's exploit was Norwegian Lutheran Deaconesses' Home and Hospital, not far from the Brooklyn Dodgers' baseball park.

Promptly at birth, an infant's life begins to depend on his doing what he has never done before. Breathing is one life process which no human being can practice before being born. In the womb there is unconscious swimming, strolling, taking it easy, even hiccoughing. But an attempt at breathing even 30 minutes before birth would mean drowning. Within 30 minutes after birth, it is just the other way.

Like all babies, Edwin had his heart in his work eight months before he was born. He was ticking a normal rate (120-160 per minute) when the doctor, at 2 a.m., picked him up for the first time. The 36-year-old obstetrician, Dr. John Allison Davis, backslapped Edwin in the orthodox fashion. Edwin refused to respond with the orthodox inhaled breath and exhaled yell. Dr. Davis worked on him some more. The night supervisor of nurses, Edna Orzechowski, tried the age-old expedient of breathing into the infant's mouth. At 2:30 Dr. Davis told Mrs. Audrey Apman that she might lose her baby. Mrs. Apman, still drowsy with anesthetic, did not understand. Dr. Davis went back to Edwin.

Man v. Fish. Edwin had a heart that could take it. While it was still beating, Dr. Davis tried a desperate succession of lung primers. First he gave Edwin oxygen straight. Then he toned it down with carbon dioxide. Then he tried adrenalin. A full hour after birth, Edwin was breathing only once a minute, was apparently ticketed for a short life. Dr. Davis was at the end of all his resources but one: metrazol.

Metrazol, a synthetic drug so powerful that psychiatrists sometimes use it in shock treatments for schizophrenia, can sometimes shock into cooperation the heart and lungs of a split physiology like Edwin's. Into the infant's shoulder, Dr. Davis needled the galvanic extract. Five minutes later Edwin was breathing normally. Three days later Dr. Davis was breathing normally too: he left on vacation.

Doctors believe that man's first breath is touched off by robomb-heavy blows: the sensations of his new climate, new handling--and the cessation of the oxygen supply from his mother. In his postnatal toughness, an Edwin Apman can faintly rival the suspended respiration of such biological sports as the mud-burrowing African lungfish. But, once he starts, he has to go on breathing the rest of his life.

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