October 12, 1928: The Iron Lung Helps a Patient Breathe

Posted October 12, 2026 · Science

On October 12, 1928, at Boston Children's Hospital in Massachusetts, doctors placed a young patient with severe breathing failure from polio inside a new machine: the Drinker respirator, better known as the iron lung. The date is widely cited as the first clinical use of the device, and the patient's quick improvement helped convince hospitals that the machine could save lives.

How it worked

The machine was developed by Philip Drinker and Louis Agassiz Shaw at the Harvard School of Public Health. A patient lay inside a sealed metal tank with only the head outside, and a seal around the neck kept the air pressure inside the tank separate from the room. Pumps lowered and raised the air pressure around the chest, which made the chest expand and contract and drew air in and out of the lungs. This approach is called negative pressure ventilation.

A lifeline during polio epidemics

Polio could paralyze the muscles that control breathing. During large outbreaks in the 1930s, 1940s, and early 1950s, some hospitals had wards filled with rows of iron lungs, and some patients lived in them for long periods of time. After polio vaccines became available in the mid 1950s, cases dropped sharply, and the need for the machines declined as well.

Modern hospitals mostly use positive pressure ventilators, which deliver air through a tube or mask, but the iron lung helped pave the way for intensive care medicine and respiratory therapy. A small number of people who relied on the machines continued to use them for many decades. It is a good reminder of how a single invention, and the doctors and nurses who learned to use it, can change what is possible for patients.

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