OPEN LETTER/ Come to the dialogue and listen to me speak, otherwise I will cut off your scholarships, you will rot in prison. Please!

 Kliko këtu për të tjera
Voxpress:

70 years inside the "iron lung", polio survivor Paul Alexander passes away

2024-03-13 16:51:35Kosova&Bota SHKRUAR NGA REDAKSIA VOX
70 years inside the "iron lung", polio survivor Paul Alexander passes
Paul Alexander

The polio survivor known as "the man with the iron lungs" has died at the age of 78.

Paul Alexander contracted polio in 1952 when he was six years old, leaving him paralyzed from the neck down.

The disease left him unable to breathe independently, prompting doctors to place him in the metal cylinder, where he would spend the rest of his life.

However, he did not give up his desire to live, graduated in law and wrote a book of memoirs.

"Paul Alexander, 'The Man in the Iron Lung,' passed away yesterday," said a post on a fundraising website.

In 1952, when he fell ill, doctors in his hometown of Dallas operated on him, saving his life. But polio meant his body was no longer able to breathe on its own.

The only solution was to place him in a so-called iron lung, a metal cylinder that insulates him up to his neck.

The lung, which he called his "old iron horse", allowed him to breathe. The pressure pushes the air out of the cylinder, forcing his lungs to expand and take in air. When air was drawn in again, the same process in reverse caused his lungs to expel the air.

After many years, Alexander learned to breathe on his own, allowing him to leave the machine for short periods of time.

Like most polio survivors placed in iron lungs, he was not expected to survive long. But he lived for decades, long after the invention of the polio vaccine in the 1950s, which eradicated the disease in the Western world.

He graduated from high school, then attended Methodist University. In 1984, he earned a law degree from the University of Texas at Austin. He practiced law for decades.


Në përputhje me standarded JTI

Video

SHIKO KANALIN NE YOUTUBE
×