The iron lung was invented by Philip Drinker, an industrial hygienist from the Harvard School of Public Health. Its cylindrical chamber encases a person’s entire body, save for the head, and uses regulated air pressure to help a patient breathe when the muscle control necessary for normal breathing has been lost.

Poliomyelitis, which can paralyze the victim’s diaphragm and make normal breathing impossible, was widespread in the 1930s and 1940s and most of the people placed in iron lungs were polio sufferers.

The dramatic recovery of the first patient immediately invested Drinker’s machine with credibility, although he didn’t ride the crest of success for very long. An improved version of Drinker’s iron lung, built by inventor Jack Emerson, soon arrived on the scene. It was cheaper, lighter and more efficient and, following some legal wrangling, it replaced Drinker’s lung.

It was the Emerson lung that filled hospital wards during the polio outbreaks that preceded the arrival of Jonas Salk’s vaccine.

Today, with polio nearly eradicated and more sophisticated breathing devices available, the iron lung has pretty much been sidelined as a respiratory therapy. It is still preferred, however, in certain rare conditions.

Source: Various

Photo: Encased in his iron lung, polio victim Fred Snite, Jr., had a bus specially built so he could look out the windows. Accompanying him are (left to right): Fred Snite, Sr.; Snite’s children Marie, Kitty and Pinky, and Mrs. Fred Snite, Jr.
Bettmann / Corbis

See Also:

• The End of the End of Polio (and Measles and Yellow Fever)
• Staff Benda Bilili’s Stripped-Down Tunes Fight Polio, Violence
• March 12, 1928: To Die in L.A.
• June 9, 1928: Across the Vast Pacific, by Air
• July 2, 1928: America’s First TV Station Goes on the Air
• Nov. 6, 1928: All the News That’s Lit

This article first appeared on Wired.com Oct. 12, 2007.

Authors: Tony Long

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