Trapped Inside a Tube: The Iron Lung Story

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Learn more about the science behind the weight loss at truthaboutweight.com. This is Lee Habib and this is Our American Stories, and we tell stories about everything here on this show, including your stories. Send them to ouramericanstories.com. They're some of our favorites. And up next, well, a great history story.

And all of our history stories are brought to us by the great folks at Hillsdale College. In 1927, the iron lung was invented. This machine helped keep people alive who were stricken with polio, a disease which today is mostly eradicated. But in the late 1940s disabled an average of more than 35,000 people a year.

Here's our own Monty Montgomery with the story of this life-saving device. In the first half of the 20th century, there was nothing quite like polio. Here's Darren Glassbrook of the Mobile Medical Museum with more on that. You know, polio was a really serious virus that affected mainly young children, children between the ages of five and nine through the mid 1950s.

The peak year was 1952 when there were 58,000 reported cases. This is polio, the cruel centuries old quibbler of children, enlarged 77,000 times. These are actual polio viruses. To the University of Michigan campus in 1955 came hundreds of scientists hoping to hear the words that would signal the end of polio's long and ruthless reign of terror.

Fortunately the vaccine was developed in 1955. But before Jonas Salk discovered that vaccine, the only way to mitigate the effects of advanced polio was through a device known as the iron lung. It's used for when people develop paralytic polio, about five out of a thousand cases and it paralyzes your diaphragm and you're unable to breathe independently. What it is, is it is a respirator that you are supposed to stay inside. You're strapped down, you're lying on your back, you're immobile, your head is resting on this pillow and when this is closed they lock it up so no air is circulating on the inside of this machine and this electric motor is going to turn this bellows back and forth.

It has a handle in case the motor breaks down you can manually operate it. But what that's going to do is create negative pressure on the inside of the machine and this is actually how your lungs and your respiratory system are supposed to work. But since there's lower pressure on the inside of the machine than the outside, that is going to actually force air through your trachea and into your lungs. And then when you're inside, you stay inside basically twenty four seven until you recover and meanwhile nurses are providing care for you through these portholes.

Washing you off, massaging your limbs, changing your bedpan, there's a wider hole on the other side. They were very costly, like in the 1930s one of these cost about fifteen hundred dollars which was as much as a single family home and you know this was before health insurance and so not everybody could afford one but hospitals invested heavily in them and they were you know very common during this era. It's not meant as a permanent treatment but some people ended up using it for the rest of their lives because they never recovered. Like Frederick Snipe, who was subject to much media attention at the time due to the iron lung's quote unquote new factor. Fred Snipe Jr. the man in the iron lung sees his daughter for the first time. The little girl was born on September the twenty second weighing eight pounds. Snipe has lived in an iron lung for four years, being stricken with infantile paralysis in Paping.

He married his childhood sweetheart last year and now he's the proud father of a bonnie little girl. Zahn magazine covers, they called him the man in the iron lung and Frederick Snipe was one of those people who never recovered and he spent the rest of his life in the iron lung until he died of heart and lung failure. It's very hard on your body to be as you can imagine motionless stuck inside all that time. By 1959 there were still one thousand two hundred people using the iron lung. By 2004 there were thirty nine and by 2014 only ten people were still using the iron lung on a daily basis.

Today there's about three. Often we get people that come in here older people who remember growing up and seeing somebody who had one of these in their home you know somebody being treated in their home in an iron lung. You know these are not made or manufactured anymore or serviced anymore and so if you do get an advanced case of polio you are more likely to be given a portable respirator that allows you freedom of movement, better access to your caregiver but these individuals felt that they were getting better results with the iron lung and so they were fortunate to have people in their family who could jerry rig it and keep it running for them and that's what they used on a daily basis.

Though close to becoming only a museum piece, iron lungs are a reminder of a dark time in our past but they're also proof of how far we've come in less than a century. For Our American Stories, I'm Monty Montgomery. I'll see you next time. Folks, if you love the great American stories we tell and love America like we do, we're asking you to become a part of the Our American Stories family. If you agree that America is a good and great country, please make a donation. A monthly gift of $17.76 is fast becoming a favorite option for supporters. Go to OurAmericanStories.com now and go to the donate button and help us keep the great American Stories coming. That's OurAmericanStories.com.