Drinker-Collins Respirator with Mirror
DateDec. 1931
Credit LineGift of the London Health Sciences Centre, London, Ontario, 2004
Object number2004.038.464
Label TextThis negative pressure ventilator, or “iron lung”, was made for people suffering from poliomyelitis. This viral disease of the spinal cord causes a weakening or paralysis of chest muscles, making it difficult for the afflicted person to breath. The “iron lung” kept sufferers alive until they recovered enough to breathe on their own again.
In 1927, Harvard professors Philip Drinker and Louis Agassiz Shaw, designed a respirator that kept a patient’s body fully enclosed within a pressurized tank while their head rested on a stand outside. Powered by an electric motor and two vacuums, the iron lung adjusted its internal pressure to force air in and out of the patient’s lungs. In 1931, American inventor John Emerson improved Drinker’s design by including a bed that could slide in and out of the iron lung, as well as windows so doctors could adjust the patient. Typically 7 feet long with an adjustable neck collar, the device accommodated both children and adults.
Significant outbreaks of poliomyelitis in Canada began in the early twentieth century. A major outbreak in 1937 led the Ontario provincial government to purchase twenty-seven iron lungs for the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. During the epidemic of 1953, which saw approximately 9,000 cases and 500 deaths, the Canadian Air Force transported iron lungs to hospitals across the country. In that same year, a University of Toronto professor, Dr. Leone Farrell, developed the “Toronto Method” for cultivating the poliovirus in fluid cultures. Farrell’s breakthrough enabled the production of the large volumes of polio virus necessary to manufacture the vaccine that Dr. Jonas Salk discovered in 1954. With the vaccine, poliomyelitis was eradicated, and the continued manufacture of the iron lung was deemed unnecessary.
Nevertheless, a 2013 study found six iron lung users in the United States, and in 2014, approximately 10 people worldwide still dependent on the respirator. One of these users is Oklahoma’s Martha Lillard, who was only five years old when she was diagnosed with polio in 1953. Seventy-years-old in 2018, Lillard can still remember what it was like when storms would cause the power to go out and nurses rushed to manually operate the iron lungs for polio patients. “The period of time that it took the nurse to get out of the chair, it seemed like forever because you weren’t breathing. You just laid there, and you could feel your heart beating and it was just terrifying. The only noise that you can make when you can’t breathe is clicking your tongue. And that whole dark room just sounded like a big room full of chickens just cluck-cluck-clucking. All the nurses were saying, ‘Just a second, you’ll be breathing in just a second.’” In 2013, Lillard still spent half of her day inside her iron lung and worried about its long-term functionality. In 2004, all service and repair for the respirators were discontinued, leaving it up to those still using an iron lung to find their own means of fixing and finding parts.
NameLung, Iron
