The History of the Asthma Inhaler

In April 1955, 13-year-old Susie Maison asked her father, the pharmacologist George L. Maison, whether there wasn’t an easier way to treat her asthma. Like so many other people with the affliction, she’d been using an awkward squeeze-bulb nebulizer, and she wondered why her medicine wasn’t available in a spray can, “like they do hairspray,” she said. Though nebulizers of that era were more effective than the medicated “asthma cigarettes” previously in vogue, Susie’s father, too, had been frustrated by the cumbersome process of refrigerating the vials of medicine and loading them into the delicate contraption.

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