The incredible story of iron lungs: “Some had to stay there all their lives”. Paul Alexander, who suffered from polio at the age of 6, died 72 years later after living in this big machine helping him to breathe.
Iron lungs are now a thing of the past, as is the disease affecting thousands of patients that they kept alive for many years, poliomyelitis. Professor Jesus Gonzalez, head of the respiratory medicine and rehabilitation department at La Pitié Salpêtrière hospital, returns for Le Parisien.