The Water-Ram of Bristol and Neonatal Insufflation

When I was a young lad in the 1930s, our family used to spend the summer holidays at a cottage in Milton Eonan, Glenlyon, Perthshire. There was no electricity and water was pumped up into the cottage from the Milton Burn by a contraption known as the Ram. Powered by the gravity flow of unlimited water from the burn above, it maintained an intermittent jet of water into the attic tank; or rather it did until it suffered one of its periodic cardiac arrests. Although the Ram was 100 yards away, the sound of its beat was transmitted along the pipe and could be clearly heard in the cottage. Likewise, we always knew when it had stopped and required to be prodded once more into action, using a technique I later appreciated to be very similar to that used for external cardiac massage. My sisters and I took it in turns to administer the necessary resuscitation. Only if one could get back into the cottage without its re-arresting, could one claim to have