The Iron Lung -- George Washington Carver Museum, Tuskegee Institute NHS, Tuskegee AL - Signs of History on Waymarking.com

This Iron Lung is a visceral and awful reminder of the toll polio and other now-preventable diseases took on families and children in the time before vaccines mad this dread disease a thing of the past. It is on display at the George Washington Carver Museum of the Tuskegee Institute National Historic Site in Tuskegee AL.

There is no cost to enter the site or the Carver Museum.

A nearby sign reads as follows:

"THE IRON LUNG

The iron lung is a mechanical chamber that was used to help the victims whose respiratory muscles were paralyzed. It acted as a huge diaphragm, inflating and deflating the lungs mechanically. His movement simulated the human diaphragm, thus enabling the patient to breathe effectively. The portholes allowed nursing care to be performed without removing the patient from the apparatus. Patients stayed in the lung until sufficient recovery of the paralyzed muscles enabled the patients to breathe without mechanical support. The recovery could take as few as 2 months to as long as a few years. Some patients remained in the lung for the rest of their lives."

My (Mama Blaster) Dad knew kids in iron lungs when he was a child. His stepmother was a nurse at Harris Hospital in Fort Worth TX. She brought him to the hospital and made him visit the kids because otherwise they would just stare at the ceiling. They were arranged in a semi-circle so they could see one another. Dad would sit in the center and read comic books to them. He did this from the time he was 9 until he was about 14. It was a lot for a Dad to handle, especially when he saw a kid who went to his school show up in the iron lung ward one day. Afterwards Dad would come home from the hospital and cry, haunted by these children and their terrible mysterious affliction.

There was always a patient for a lung. Dad told me one kid would die and within hours the lung would have been sterilized and another kid would arrive to go into the vacated lung.

Dad never forgot these kids, some of whom became his friends, and some of whom died. Even 50 years later, a sound like that of an iron lung would bring back bad memories.

My daughters, on the other hand, had never seen or heard of an iron lung,. They had no idea what it was. They thought it was an incubator for multiple babies to save space, or something to sterilize medical equipment with.

How quickly we forget.

Group that erected the marker: National Park Service URL of a web site with more information about the history mentioned on the sign: [Web Link] Address of where the marker is located. Approximate if necessary: Tuskegee University George Washington Carver Museum Tuskegee, AL

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Date Logged Log   07/28/2017 Benchmark Blasterz visited it