What is Polio? Poliomyelitis, also called polio, is a serious infection caused by a virus. There are three types of poliovirus and many strains of each type. The virus enters through the mouth, multiplies in the throat, stomach, and intestines, and then moves into the bloodstream. It is carried to the central nervous system where it replicates and destroys the motor neuron cells which control the muscles for swallowing, circulation, and respiration, and those for the trunk, arms, and legs. Although polio has plagued humans since ancient times,
its most extensive outbreak occurred in the first half of the 1900s.
At the height of the polio epidemic in 1952, nearly 60,000 cases
with more than 3,000 deaths were reported in the United States alone.
Vaccines created by Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin in the 1950s proved
successful in stamping out the virus. The last case of wild (naturally-occuring)
polio in the United States was reported in 1979. An international
effort began in the 1980s with the goal of eliminating the polio
virus everywhere in the world.
What is an Iron
Lung?
No
device is more associated with polio than the tank respirator,
better known as the iron lung. Physicians who treated people
in the acute, early stage of polio saw that many patients
were unable
to breathe when the virus’s action paralyzed muscle
groups in the chest. Death was frequent at this stage, but
those who
survived usually recovered much or almost all of their former
strength. Nothing
worked well in keeping people breathing until 1927, when
Philip Drinker and Louis Agassiz Shaw at Harvard University
devised
a version of a tank respirator that could maintain respiration
artificially
until a person could breathe independently, usually after
one or two weeks. The machine was powered by an electric motor
with two
vacuum cleaners. The pump changed the pressure inside a rectangular,
airtight metal box, pulling air in and out of the lungs.
Inventor
John Emerson had refined Drinker’s device and cut the
cost nearly in half. Inside the tank respirator, the patient
lay on
a bed (sometimes called a “cookie tray”) that
could slide in and out of the cylinder as needed. The side
of the
tank had portal windows so attendants could reach in and
adjust limbs,
sheets, or hot packs. |
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| The photo on the left shows Peggy wearing a chest shell attached to a portable respirator, which allowed her to spend a few hours outside the iron lung. On the right, Shiloh Museum outreach coordinator Susan Young holds a chest shell. Note the size of the "portable" respirator Susan is standing next to. | |
