The polio epidemic of the 1950s devastated America...  ...to breathe, which is why many sufferers lived in iron lungs , often temporarily but sometimes for the rest of...  ...heir lives. Today, very few people who depend on iron lungs are left. Jennings Brown of Gizmodo found three o...  ...three of them, possi...

Martha Mason of Lattimore, North Carolina was a vi...  ...she was a child. She breathed with the help of an iron lung which encased her body, leaving only her head fre...  ...o documented cases of anyone living as long in an iron lung . From her horizontal world — a 7-foot-long, 80...  ...her horizontal world...