One of the many medical artefacts held in the History of Medicine Library collection, is an artificial pneumothorax, as used by respiratory physician and Foundation Fellow, Dr. Cotter Harvey. This therapy aimed to induce a pneumothorax (collapsed lung), in order to give the lungs some rest. The concept of resting a tuberculous lung by surrounding it with a splint of air was first proposed by physicians as early as the 18th century.

Carlo Forlanini developed a successful technique to induce pneumothorax in 1882, and it became generally accepted by chest physicians around the time of the First World War. It was described in 1914 by L. S. Latham, FRACP, in the Medical Journal of Australia. By the 1930s, it was generally recognised as one of the most successful advances in therapy since the establishment of the Sanatoria.

It was typically maintained for an average of two to three years, and in successful cases, patients returned to their employment, while continuing to receive "refills" every two to three weeks in the out-patients department or at the physician's consulting room.

Dr. Harvey described the use of his machine, designed by Dr James Maxwell FRCP, a London Chest Hospital physician, as follows:

By drawing up the plunger, the cylinder is filled with 200 c.c. of air. The tap is then reversed, the plunger slowly falls, sending air at the carefully controlled speed, through the outlet tubing into the pleural cavity (initially of course a potential one) after manometric readings have established that the needle is in the right place. At first some 250 c.c. of air are given, repeated the next day, then in larger amounts at increasing intervals, the later stages up to 1000 c.c. of air were given with no discomfort to the patient. For refills no local anaesthetic was needed and the whole procedure took about 7 minutes. It was of course, carefully and continually monitored by radiographic screening.

Despite artificial pneumothorax's limitations, it was useful for a long time in the fight against tuberculosis, but it became increasingly overlooked and replaced by the less invasive drugs that became available in the 1940s and 1950s. The advent of antibiotics, including streptomycin, led to the rapid discontinuance of the so-called 'collapse therapy'.

As well as the artificial pneumothorax and his teaching slides, Dr. Harvey deposited an extensive archive with the History of Medicine Library, detailing his work as a chest physician (tuberculosis and anti-smoking) over many years at the highest levels.