Civil Defense Emergency Hospital-Contents Page 2

Salvaging the PDH Page 2 PDH Main Page PDH Page 1 PDH Page 2 PDH Page 3 Columbus PDH Back to Civil Defense Museum Main		On these 3 pages I will try to catalog a little of what I found in the remains of the PDH stock. I don't have any knowledge of medical items or procedures so I have just put up the pictures with my best-guess commentary on what is in the picture. Found in the pile was this army field hospital x-ray table. I was absolutely stunned when I opened the box and discovered this. It was in perfectly new condition. The x-ray tube unit and transformer were long gone but every part of the table was undisturbed. This table is now with a group that does W.W.II army field hospital reenactments. The only other x-ray item I found was this Picker-Polaroid X-ray film developer. We uncovered an unopened box that weighed about 100 lbs. We opened the box to find another box inside sealed in a large foil envelope. Inside of that box was this x-ray film developer. Here the case is open showing the developer. I have some pictures of it open I will put up soon. All the unit really does is take cassettes of Polaroid x-ray film, pull the film out of the cassette through 2 rollers (just like the Polaroid camera) and develop the film. This large crate has a 1500 gallon rubber water tank in it. This thing weighs a ton. I didn't salvage this because it was so heavy and huge. It is a free standing water tank that is self supporting when filled. Kind of like a big kiddie swimming pool. There were some wooden stakes and ropes with it to stabilize the tank when filled. The rubber was still pliable and soft. There were several cases of plaster impregnated bandages for making casts. These cases were pretty heavy and most of them had been torn open but the stuff appeared to still be usable. There were 2 of these exam lamps still in their original boxes. These lamps were in new condition and even had spare bulbs with them. I really like the vintage turquoise color. They still work perfectly and the wiring wasn't even dry-rotted. This case of hospital gowns sat around the whole time I was going through the stuff. I thought to myself "what am I going to do with hospital gowns?" I opened it the last day I was cleaning out the stuff and found 100 brand new condtion gowns still sealed in their packages. Needless to say I loaded them up too. Here is one of the gowns. I haven't seen a cotton hospital gown in a long time.