Paul Alexander spent a staggering seven decades relying on his iron lung for survival. Doctors said “he shouldn't be alive,” after he contracted polio as a six-year-old. But his seven-foot ...

A polio survivor, who lived inside an iron lung for 70 years, has died at the age of 78. Paul Alexander, widely known as ...

Paul had survived a serious bout of polio, but had been left quadriplegic. After an emergency tracheostomy operation, he was unable to breathe without the iron lung machine that now encased his ...

And the sarcophagus-like iron lung, which uses bellows to keep the patient breathing, was once a common sight on polio wards. But all this feels like a long-forgotten era - and for good reason.

Helps Polio Victims The electrophrenic respirator ... Whittenberger explained, the electrophrenic method is superior to the "Iron lung" in the treatment of the bulbar variation of the disease.

Polio was a disease that devastated the United ... the effects of the disease decades after its initial strike. The iron lung was an invention that helped keep thousands of sufferers alive ...

Polio was a disease that devastated the United ... the effects of the disease decades after its initial strike. The iron lung was an invention that helped keep thousands of sufferers alive ...

Narrative: Polio, that evil disease which threatens ... Narrative: Later that day... Kid in iron lung:...and that's when I was put in this iron lung. Without it, I wouldn't be able to breathe.

As of the 1920s, that meant the infamous iron lung, the coffinlike cylinder that encased polio victims in metal, sometimes for life. Researchers believe that polio has plagued societies for centuries.