Trapped Inside a Tube: The Iron Lung Story

On this episode of Our American Stories, Daryn Glassbrook of the Mobile Medical Museum tells the story of the iron lung, a device used to keep people with advanced polio alive in the first half of the 20th century.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:15):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
and we tell stories about everything here on the show,
including your story. Send them to our American Stories dot com.
There's 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 nineteen twenty seven, the iron lung was invented. This

(00:38):
machine helped keep people alive who were stricken with polio,
a disease which today is mostly eradicated, but in the
late nineteen forties disabled an average of more than thirty
five thousand people a year. Here's our own Monty Montgomery
with the story of this life saving device. The first

(01:00):
half of the twentieth century, there was nothing quite like polio.
Here's Darren Glassburg 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 nineteen fifties. The peak
year was nineteen fifty two, when there were fifty eight

(01:22):
thousand reported cases. This is polio, the cruel centuries old
quibbler of children at large. Seventy seven thousand times they
use are actual polioviruses. To the University of Michigan campus
in nineteen fifty five came hundreds of scientists hoping to
hear the word that would signal the end of polio's

(01:43):
long and ruthless reign of terror. Fortunately, the vaccine was
developed in nineteen fifty five, but before Jonas Salt discovered
that vaccine, the only way to mitigate the effects of
advanced polio was through a device known as the iron lung.

(02:05):
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, your immobile.

(02:28):
Your head is resting on this pillow and when this
is closed, they lock it up. So nowhere 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

(02:51):
create negative pressure on the inside of the machine, and
this is actually how your lungs and your respirator worry
system are supposed to work. But since there's lower pressure
on the inside of the machine than outside, that is
going to actually force air through your tragea and into

(03:14):
your lungs. And then when you're inside, you stay inside
basically twenty four to seven until you recover. And meanwhile
nurses are providing care for you through these portholes, washing
you off, massaging your limbs, changing your bed pan. There's
a wider pole on the other side. They were very costly,

(03:35):
like in the nineteen thirties. Is one of these costs
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

(03:55):
common during this era. It's not men 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 lungs quote unquote new factor. Frid Snight,

(04:17):
Junior the Man in the Iron lungs. He's his daughter
for the first time. The little girl was born on
September the twenty second, weighing eight pounds. The snide has
lived in an iron lung for four years, being stricken
with infantile paralysis in paping. He madded his childhood sweetheart
last year, and now he's the proud father of a
bonny little girl. Zon magazine covers. They called him the

(04:39):
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 hard and lung failure. It's very hard on
your body to be, as you can imagine, motionless stuck
inside all that time. By nineteen fifty nine, there were

(05:02):
still one thousand, two hundred people using the iron lung.
By two thousand and four there were thirty nine, and
by twenty fourteen 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

(05:23):
who remember growing up and seeing somebody who had one
of these in their home. You know, somebody being treated
in their home and an iron lung. Do 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

(05:46):
that allows you freedom of movement, better access to your caregiver.
But these individuals fell that they were getting better results
with the iron lung, and so they were fortunate to
have people in their family could jerry rig it and
keep it running for them, and that's what they used

(06:06):
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 and great job is always

(06:28):
to Monty, who himself is a Hillsdale grad. And a
special thanks to Darren Classbrook of the Mobile Medical Museum.
What a piece of history. This is medical history, and
all of our history stories are brought to us by
the great folks at Hillsdale College, where you can go
to learn all the things that are good in life
and all the things that are beautiful in life. You
can't get to Hillsdale. Hillsdale will come to you with

(06:50):
their free and terrific online courses. Go to Hillsdale dot edu.
That's Hillsdale dot edu. Since nineteen eighty eight, polio cases
worldwide have gone down nine and the number of cases
in twenty seventeen was a mere twenty two. Again, compare
that to thirty five thousand a year being paralyzed or
disabled just in this country. The story of the Iron

(07:12):
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(07:34):
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(07:55):
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