![Meet longest surviving iron lung patient kept alive by a machine for 70 years | Guinness World Records Meet longest surviving iron lung patient kept alive by a machine for 70 years | Guinness World Records](https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/Images/iron-lung-patients-and-nurses-split-image_tcm25-741912.jpg)
Meet longest surviving iron lung patient kept alive by a machine for 70 years | Guinness World Records
Call the Midwife - Those who watched our Christmas Special will have seen a major story strand involving the scourge of polio, and treatment involving a machine called a negative pressure ventilator -
![A 1940s photograph of a child in an iron lung, used to treat polio patients that could not breathe on their own due to paralysis. | DPLA A 1940s photograph of a child in an iron lung, used to treat polio patients that could not breathe on their own due to paralysis. | DPLA](https://d2jf00asb0fe6y.cloudfront.net/no-cure-polio_09_c94df9d22daf4976aa5ee18e43967f44.jpg)
A 1940s photograph of a child in an iron lung, used to treat polio patients that could not breathe on their own due to paralysis. | DPLA
The Man in an Iron Lung (A Polio Survivor's Story) | college, dormitory | Paul survived polio in the 1950's and has used an iron lung to breathe ever since. He would
![Iron lung (c. 1933) used to "breathe" for polio patients until 1955 when polio vaccine became available is located in the Mobile Medical Museum, Mobile, Alabama - original digital file | Library of Congress Iron lung (c. 1933) used to "breathe" for polio patients until 1955 when polio vaccine became available is located in the Mobile Medical Museum, Mobile, Alabama - original digital file | Library of Congress](http://tile.loc.gov/image-services/iiif/service:pnp:highsm:05200:05216/full/pct:50/0/default.jpg)