Nancy Whelan

“pressure ventilation—pumping air into the paralyzed lungs through a tube inserted directly into the trachea—essentially adapting a technique of the surgical operating room to the polio ward. The subsequently designed mechanical positive-pressure respirators eventually replaced the iron lung tanks. However, even in 2007, some thirty to forty patients in the USA were still dependent on the iron lung. One, Dianne Odell of Jackson, Tennessee, who developed poliomyelitis at age three, has been in an iron lung for fifty-seven years, tethered to the machine twenty-four hours a day. The cost is $1,000/week”
― Michael B.A. Oldstone, Viruses, Plagues, and History: Past, Present and Future