Martin Wright, who died on March 4th aged 88, was a prolific medical inventor, whose instruments have helped millions of people and influenced many areas of medical practice.
He worked on two breathalysers, the second of which, the alcolmeter, he developed with Tom Jones. Later, he invented a pocket-sized, battery-powered syringe driver, which allowed children with thalassaemia (a hereditary haemoglobin disorder), to receive lengthy infusion treatments while going about their daily lives. It has since been used in a wide range of other conditions, from providing slow injections on neonatal intensive care units to the continuous infusions of pain relieving drugs to terminally-ill patients.
Martin Wright's training and rapport with the medical profession, coupled with entirely self-taught engineering skills and flair for design, allowed him to produce simple, compact pieces of precision engineering. These could be manufactured economically, applied on a large scale, and many became design classics in the medical world.
Born in Dulwich, the second son of a clergyman, he was educated at Winchester and Trinity College, Cambridge. He had wanted to study engineering, but was dissuaded on the grounds that it was an unsuitable profession. Graduating with first-class honours in physiology, he went on to St Bartholomew's Hospital, London, and qualified as a doctor in 1938.
In 1942, he enlisted in the Royal Army Medical Corps. By the end of the war he had become a pathologist largely by default, and, in this capacity, studied the miners' disease, pneumoconiosis, at Llandough Hospital in Wales. It soon became apparent that the unit needed specialised equipment. So Martin Wright, starting with machines to produce experimental dust conditions for his own research, was soon serving as inventor-in-residence. And in response to the need for a standard measure of lung function, he developed his most influential instrument, the peak-flow meter.
The device's invention in 1956 was followed by publication of results in 1959, and peak flow rapidly became a standard measure of respiratory function in most lung disease, particularly in the assessment of asthma and bronchitis.
The miniature, plastic version developed in the 1970s can now be found in every medical bag and consulting room, as well as in the homes of many asthmatics. Seven million peakflow meters have been distributed since production began.
By 1957, he was working solely on instrument development at the National Institute for Medical Research in London. There, he was actively involved in the study of breath alcohol, and advising on the implementation of drink-driving laws.
Martin Wright had a constant stream of good ideas and his inventions spanned many disciplines: epidemiologists remember him for his random zero blood-pressure machine; anaesthetists for his Wright respirometer, and paediatricians for his apnoea (temporary inability to breathe) alarm, the MR10. This was developed in response to two tragic deaths in a special care nursery.
Although his workshop often appeared somewhat improvised, the final instruments were simple, but superbly elegant solutions to most complex technical problems.