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The iron lung machine was invented by Phillip Drinker and Louis A. Shaw.
Originally used for treatment of coal gas poisoning, it found its most
famous use in the mid-1900s when victims of poliomyelitis were stricken
with paralysis. The first iron lung was used on a polio victim on October
12, 1928 at Children’s Hospital, Boston, on a child unconscious from
respiratory failure; her dramatic recovery, within seconds of being placed
within the chamber, did much to popularize the "Drinker Respirator." Boston
manufacturer Warren E. Collins began mass production of the iron lung that
year. Entire hospital wards were filled with rows of iron lungs at the
height of the polio outbreaks of the 1940s and 1950s. With the success of
the worldwide polio vaccination programs beginning in the mid-1950’s which
have virtually eradicated new cases of the disease, and the advent of modern
ventilators that control breathing via the direct intubation of the airway,
the use of the iron lung has sharply declined.
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