The Disposable Emesis Basin And Belgium
The second device Blount invented — the disposable emesis basin — followed a parallel path to a different European destination.
The emesis basin was fabricated from baked newspaper, flour, and water. The materials were cheap, biodegradable, and entirely expendable. The Belgian government adopted it.
Some sources note that Belgium “still uses a variation of her design in its hospitals nationwide,” which would represent a decades-long legacy of a specific medical innovation that began in a kitchen in New Jersey.
The disposable emesis basin is, in retrospect, an obviously good idea. The shift to disposable medical products — from individual-use surgical gloves and syringes to disposable gowns and face masks — has been one of the major trends in medical practice in the decades since Blount’s innovation. Reducing the risk of cross-contamination through single-use disposables is now standard hospital practice across many categories of medical equipment.
Blount arrived at this approach in the 1940s or early 1950s, using materials as simple as newspaper and flour, for a product as basic as a basin for collecting bodily fluids. The innovation was not technologically complex. It was a practical idea applied to a practical problem, with a manufacturing approach suited to the materials available.
That the VA was “not interested” in this invention as well suggests a pattern of institutional resistance rather than a series of specific, individually justified decisions about specific devices.