Iron Lung

This iron lung is one of a number of exhibits on historic medical equipment and techniques at the Mobile Medical Museum. Iron lungs were mechanical respirators used to help people unable to breathe on their own. They were in wide use during the polio epidemics of the 1940s and 1950s.

Historic iron lung ventilator displayed in a museum exhibit, with access ports along its side and a photograph of a 1950s iron lung ward mounted above it.
Photo courtesy of the George F. Landegger Collection of Alabama Photographs, Carol Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress

Appears In

Mobile Medical Museum

Mobile Medical Museum

Historic iron lung ventilator displayed in a museum exhibit, with access ports along its side and a photograph of a 1950s iron lung ward mounted above it.

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