The Medicine Chest

Items

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  Bird Mark 7 Respirator

  Dr. Bird invented a number of popular medical devices that were used to care for patients with breathing problems. During WWII he served in the Army Air Corps where, in addition to training and transport assignments, he studied aircraft and respiratory and cardiovascular problems at high altitude. Two devices that he produced during the war went into the design of his first commercial ventilator, the Mark 7 Respirator. Dr. Bird’s respirators and anesthesia ventilators have been used during many of the first human surgical procedures. Among these were the first open heart procedure and the first liver transplant.
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  The Green Ray (Jules Verne)

  "At last only a faint rim of gold skimmed the surface of the sea. 'The Green Ray! the Green Ray!' cried in one breath the brothers, Dame Bess and Partridge, whose eyes for one second had revelled in the incomparable tint of liquid jade. Oliver and Helena alone had missed the phenomenon which had at last appeared after so many fruitless observations. Just as the sun was shooting its last ray into space their eyes met, and all else was forgotten in that glance. But Helena had caught the black ray, shining from the young man's eyes, and Oliver the blue ray beaming from hers. The sun had gone down, and neither Oliver nor Helena had seen the Green Ray" (Verne 1883:136).
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  The Green Ray (Tacita Dean)

  "This is really interesting, because I filmed it on this beach in Madagascar, and there was this couple who were hanging around. They didn’t see the green ray, and they’d videotaped the sunset to document it. Then they replayed their video to me for proof that it wasn’t there. But I was absolutely convinced that I had seen it, so it had to be on my film, which was optical and analog. When I got the film back, it was very, very faint, and I had to really push it to get more color in the film, to bring out the green ray. But it’s definitely there. It’s not a fiction. Some people think the green ray is an illusion, but it’s not" (Dean in Eugenides 2006).
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  The Green Ray (Jay Gatsby)

  “Gatsby believed in the green light, The orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eludes us then, but that’s no matter – to-morrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms further... And one fine morning – So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past” (Fitzgerald 1983: 188).