Iron lung is an airtight metal tank that encloses all of the body except the head and forces the lungs to inhale and exhale through regulated changes in air pressure.
I saw this today and just had to take a picture of it. Can you even image having to live in this metal tube. The first modern and practical respirator nicknamed the "iron lung" was invented by Harvard medical researchers Philip Drinker and Louis Agassiz Shaw in 1927. The inventors used an iron box and two vacuum cleaners to build their prototype respirator. Almost the length of a subcompact car, the iron lung exerted a push-pull motion on the chest.
In 1927, the first iron lung was installed at Bellevue hospital in New York City. The first patients of the iron lung were polio sufferers with chest paralysis.
Later, John Emerson improved upon Philip Drinker’s invention and invented an iron lung that cost half as much to manufacture. http://inventors.about.com/od/istartinventions/a/iron_lung.htm
