How was Paul Alexander, the man who spent the vast majority of his life in an iron lung, able to survive for 70 years?
As previously reported, the late man - perhaps better known as "Polio Paul" - sadly died at the age of 78. His death was announced on Tuesday (March 12) in an update shared on the GoFundMe page set up to help with his housing and health care.
"Paul Alexander, 'The Man in the Iron Lung', passed away yesterday," the page read. "After surviving polio as a child, he lived over 70 years inside of an iron lung. In this time Paul went to college, became a lawyer, and a published author. His story traveled wide and far, positively influencing people around the world. Our community raised a large amount of money for him."
Alexander's brother also shared a message of his own, writing: "I am so [grateful] to everybody who donated to my brother’s fundraiser. It allowed him to live his last few years stress-free. It will also pay for his funeral during this difficult time. It is absolutely incredible to read all the comments and know that so many people were inspired by Paul. I am just so grateful."
In the summer of 1952, Alexander contracted polio at the height of the epidemic when more than 21,000 paralytic polio cases were recorded that year in the United States, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
According to The Guardian, his mom took him to the doctors where healthcare professionals said that there was nothing to be done for him. He was left on a gurney in a hallway, barely breathing.
However, one doctor decided to re-analyze him and rushed him to the theater to perform "an emergency tracheotomy to suction out the congestion in his lungs". Three days later, he woke up to his body being engulfed in a machine that "wheezed and sighed".
While Paul eventually recovered from the infection, the disease left him paralyzed from the neck down and unable to breathe on his own. But he was able to survive thanks to the iron lung, a gigantic metal cylinder that varies air pressure.
"The doctors told us Paul could not possibly live," his mother Doris Alexander said in his autobiography, per CNN. "There were a few times when the electrical power failed and then the lung had to be pumped by hand. Our neighbors would run over and help us pump it."
The late man spent seven decades in the medical machine and was even declared by Guinness World Records in March 2023 the longest-surviving iron lung patient in the world.
The iron lung was invented by a team at Harvard University who wanted to counteract one of the most alarming symptoms of acute polio: Muscle paralysis. If paralysis affected the chest muscles, the person couldn’t breathe independently and would mostly die. Therefore, investigators looked to technology for a way to keep these patients alive.
As explained by the Science Museum, the device has a respirator that "worked by pushing air into the lungs by method of artificial respiration called External Negative Pressure Ventilation (ENPV)".
"The bellows sucked air out of the box in which the patient was sealed. As the air pressure in the box fell, the patient’s lungs automatically expanded, drawing fresh air into the diaphragm," it read. "When the bellows allowed air back into the box, the air pressure rose and the patient's lungs deflated passively, pushing air out of them."
The "whoosh" from the medical device became the reassuring sound of the patient's breathing.
Alexander had high ambitions and did not want to spend his whole life trapped in a metal coffin so he invented a technique that allowed momentary freedom.
At the age of 8, he learned to breathe on his own for up to three minutes by gulping in the air "like a fish" and swallowing it into his lungs, per The New York Times. After a year of perfecting his breathing with physical therapist Mrs Sullivan, he managed 180 seconds of unassisted breathing and was given a puppy, Ginger, for his efforts.
Despite the odds being stacked against him, 21-year-old Alexander became the first person to graduate from a Dallas high school without physically attending a class.
He then got into Southern Methodist University in Dallas - despite repeated rejections by the university administration - and went on to study law at the University of Texas at Austin.
For many years, Alexander was a lawyer in Dallas and Fort Worth, representing clients in court in a suit and a wheelchair that held his paralyzed body upright.
Our thoughts continue to be with his family and friends.
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