Vital Capacity

John Hutchinson made his way from the coalfields of 19th Century Tyneside to become a surgeon, a physician and a pioneer of chest medicine. When he published his findings on lung capacity using his newly-designed machine he received international acclaim. 

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What makes a man abandon his family and his successful professional life for the goldfields of Australia?


John Hutchinson left the coalfields of 19th Century Tyneside to become a surgeon, a physician and a pioneer of chest medicine. His research on lung capacity using his newly-designed machine received international acclaim. And then, just as the pinnacle of professional success was within his reach, he cast it all aside and travelled to Australia as a ship’s surgeon. He was involved in the first large-scale miner’s strike, colliery disasters, navigated the chaos of medical education in the early 19th century, invented the spirometer, and did some meticulous research. He then travelled to Melbourne in the early days of the Australian gold rush, and on to the goldfields of Victoria, before moving on to Fiji.


Artist, sculptor, musician, and engineer, Hutchinson was a man of many parts, and his design for a spirometer survived until modern times, as did his term for maximum breathable air: vital capacity.  In this book a renowned respiratory specialist discusses some of the other factors that influenced his life, including some crucial misconceptions about the causes of disease.