– [Narrator] Could you
imagine what it would be like to live your entire life
confined in a mechanical box, one that's just big enough
to fit your body into? What if you couldn't move, eat, or even breathe without it? Sounds like a waking nightmare, right? Well, for Paul Richard Alexander, this isn't a bad dream, but the stark reality of his life. Since 1952, Paul has
spent every waking moment trapped inside this machine. But how could this possibly happen? Well, to find out, let's take a look at the life of a man who's been locked inside a
machine for almost 70 years.
To understand Paul's predicament, first we need to understand polio, the virus that Paul contracted
at the age of just six. Polio, short for poliomyelitis, is a life-threatening disease that can infect a person's spinal cord. In severe cases, this causes
paralysis where sufferers can't move parts of their body
and become incredibly weak. This terrifying condition
affects about one in every 200 sufferers, leaving many with
progressive muscle weakness, irreversibly withered limbs,
and joint deformities. Scary as it sounds, these people are the lucky ones as paralysis this extreme can
affect muscles to the point where sufferers can no longer walk, eat, or even breathe on their own and sadly, this is where Paul comes in. He got the virus in 1952
when the US and Europe were going through the worst
polio epidemic on record.
In that year alone,
more than 57,000 people were infected in the US. For perspective, that's about the same as the entire population of Greenland although polio had been around
for a long time before 1952 and could be traced back all
the way to ancient Egypt. Take a look at this Egyptian
stone tablet that was carved around 3,400 years ago. Notice the man's withered leg? That's a telltale symptom of polio. However, it wasn't until the
beginning of the 20th century that the invasive infection really started to cause problems. In 1916, 36 years before
Paul would catch polio, over 27,000 cases were reported
in New York City alone. And sadly, at least 6,000
people didn't make it. Widespread panic gripped the
city with the governments urging families to quarantine
inside their homes.
Movie theaters, pools and
amusement parks all closed down and people fled to live
in less populated areas. Does this sound familiar at all? Even though I'm getting
vivid flashbacks of 2020, unlike the COVID epidemic, it wasn't the elderly
who were most vulnerable to catching polio, but the children. This is because the
viruses sickeningly spread when the oh God, feces
of an infected person is introduced to the
mouth of a healthy person. This can be through
infected water or food, or from someone just
not washing their hands. And considering young
children rarely think to wash their hands before
they go shoving them in anything they can
grab into their mouths, it's no surprise they
were so badly affected. But if polio had been
panicking the world since 1916, why was there still no cure by 1952 when Paul caught the disease? Well, medicine and science were a lot less advanced back then, and much of what we know today, we'd still hadn't figured out.
So without a solid answer for how to treat or protect against polio, people turned to strange remedies that were often suggested
by frauds trying to cash in on people's fear, but even
legitimate respected experts frequently suggested cures
based on false reasoning. In 1916, leading biomedical inventor John Haven Emerson recommended
sufferers take regular baths in almond meal, and even
insisted that electrocution of their lower extremities would help alleviate the symptoms. Though if you think that
sounds uncomfortable, other treatments include
injecting lethal substances straight into the patient's spine like adrenaline and even disinfectant. It's similar to how President Trump suggested treating COVID, but on a much more painful level. Unsurprisingly, many of
these so-called treatments actually made the condition worse. In 1916, Samuel Meltzer, a
respected American physiologist, championed injecting
adrenaline into the spines of ill children based on
successful experiments he'd carried out on monkeys, but the method turned out
to be a complete failure with humans and sadly out
of the 105 children tested, 45 didn't make it through the process.
Those children lucky enough not to befall this frightful fate often
had their bodies covered in plaster casts or metal
braces for weeks, months, or even years. Though heavy and cumbersome, the casts and braces were vital to supporting polio weakened body parts. While they helped the kids recover, being confined to these casts and having to spend
weeks alone and paralyzed in the hospital was an
understandably scary experience. One five-year-old boy who was
paralyzed from the neck down recalled a particularly
terrifying encounter with a wasp.
Lying in his hospital
bed and unable to move, he suddenly heard of buzzing
sound coming from the far side of the room, he couldn't run away, or even move a sheet over his head. He just had to watch as the
wasp buzzed closer and closer and closer, but it wasn't
all doom and gloom. In 1928, hygienist Philip Drinker and physiologist Lewis Shaw teamed up at Harvard University to form a polio fighting supergroup. Together, they created the first machine to effectively treat the most severely effected polio sufferers, or at least keep them alive
long enough to recover. You see, in the worst cases of polio like Paul Alexander's, patients would be
paralyzed to such a degree that they couldn't even use their lungs, but Drinker and Shaw's device inflated and deflated polio
sufferers lungs for them.
The first machine they made
used two vacuum cleaners powered by an electric motor to suck air out of a sealed metal box that was just big enough for one patient. This lowered the air pressure inside, forcing the patient's
chest cavity to expand to fill the vacuum and
flooding their lungs with air. Then the vacuum cleaners were reversed, pumping air back into the box
and raising the air pressure, forcing the lungs to deflate and push the air back out.
This miraculous machine was
called a Drinker respirator, but it was more simply
known as an iron lung. After some tweaks, the original design was improved
by using a set of bellows instead of vacuum cleaners. Drinker also experimented with a concept of a multiperson ventilator
by turning an entire room into one large iron lung. It could hold up to four patients
and had enough room inside for a nurse to move around
and take care of the children. Later in 1931, John Haven Emerson, yup, the same man who
recommended electrocution and bathing in almond
meal to cure the disease surprisingly made
improvements to the iron lung. Emerson's machine was quieter, more efficient and cheaper at just $1,000. That was less than half the
cost of a Drinker respirator, but it was still a lot of money, costing roughly $17,500 today. Because they were so expensive, hospitals had trouble buying
enough iron lungs to support the sheer number of children
affected by the virus. Some hospitals were
forced to make their own improvised machines like
this one from the 1940s, which as you can see, had bellows that were pumped by hand.
Looks more like a torture
device than a medical one if you ask me. A handful of generous
people did their best to help out though. Take Sir William Morris, for example, an English car manufacturer
who also happens to be the most British brit
I think I've ever seen. In 1938, he promised to
manufacture and donate as many iron lungs as
he could to any hospital that asked for them. In total, he donated over 5,000 machines. That's about $95 million
worth of equipment in today's money. What a gentleman, but now it's time to jump ahead to 1952, the year the most cases of
polio were ever recorded in the US. As thousands of children were being sent to hospitals
with a deadly disease, six-year-old Paul Alexander
was outside his home in Dallas, Texas playing
happily in the summer rain. One second, everything was perfectly fine. The next, he began to
feel sick and ran inside to complain to his mother
of head and neck pains. Within seconds, Paul's mother
recognized that telltale fever symptoms of early stage polio and rushed her son to bed. The family doctor was called out, but because of the
hospitals were overcrowded with other polio patients, he recommended Paul stay at home despite his worsening condition.
After just five days, though, the boy had deteriorated to the point that his parents had to take him into the hospital, despite their doctor's advice. By this time, Paul could
hardly hold a crayon and was so weak that
he couldn't even cough to clear his lungs. When a doctor finally examined him, he devastatingly told Paul's parents that nothing could be
done, but thankfully, a second doctor thought differently. Heroically, this doctor performed
an emergency tracheotomy on Paul, creating a
small hole in his throat and using a tube, sucked out all the
congestion from his lungs. When Paul eventually woke up,
he was still unable to move, but his body was confusingly
encased in a loud machine. At first, he though he was in
some sort of strange dream, but he soon learned he'd been
confined to an iron lung.
Though he beaten the initial infection, polio had left him permanently
paralyzed from the neck down. So for the next 18 months,
this is where he would stay. The hospital ward was full
of children just like him. But as the months passed, Paul saw more and more
of them slowly recover or more often than not, pass away. He however remained unchanged, glued to his bed with the
machine breathing for him. To help overcome his inability
to breathe naturally, the doctors spent time
teaching Paul to frog breathe.
And no, this doesn't mean Paul learned how to breathe underwater, rather frog breathing is
a technique that involves sucking in a mouth full of air then raising your tongue
to the roof of your mouth. This movement pushes air down your throat, forcing it into your lungs. Without practice, it's very difficult, especially for a small child. Go on, give it a try now
if you don't believe me. Finding it difficult, maybe you can accomplish
something a little easier, like hitting those like and
subscribe buttons down below. All done, awesome. Now, where were we? Although he hated doing
the breathing exercise, through sheer willpower and perseverance, Paul mastered frog breathing
by the age of just eight. This allowed him to breathe
outside of the iron lung by himself for the first
time in nearly two years. Finally, Paul had some
of his independence back. And even though he still needed to sleep in the iron lung every
night, he felt alive again.
Determined to accomplish his
goals despite his affliction, Paul adapted to his new life. A mirror was fixed to
the top of his machine so that he could look around the room without craning his neck. His father made him a special stick he could hold with his mouth
and use to play with toys. He also learned how to paint
and write with a paint brush or a pencil in his mouth. But as Paul grew older, he knew he had to get an
education to succeed in life because even though
his body was paralyzed, his mind was still sharp as a knife. By the age of 21, Paul unbelievably became the first person to graduate from a Dallas high school without physically attending any lessons. Not only that, but he graduated
at the top of his class. Wow, all that and he didn't
even have access to Zoom, what's your excuse? After completing high
school with flying colors, Paul then applied to Dallas's
Southern Methodist University, but they wouldn't accept him, deeming him too disabled to study.
Paul was understandably furious, but it would take more than
that to make him give up. He called the university countless times and fought tooth and nail
for a course placement for two long years. Eventually the university
caved and he was accepted to study economics and finance. After overcoming that hurdle, he began to dream bigger and
successfully transferred over to the University of Texas. At his old college, Paul
had been living at home, but to the horror of his parents, he was now moving out to
live on the campus full time. It can't have been easy
getting the massive 660 pound iron lung into his new dorm room, but not even that
challenge could stop Paul. So he probably didn't
help with transporting it, but give the guy a break.
After seven long years, Paul graduated from the
University of Texas in 1978, but even that wasn't enough for him. As soon as he finished one degree, he decided to dive right into another and not just any other, but one of the toughest degrees
available at the time, law. Despite his professors telling
him he would never pass, in 1984, a full 17 years after
he graduated high school, Paul got his law degree. Two years later against all odds, he kickstarted a successful
career as a lawyer, smashing through every
obstacle in his way. Now that's what you call a success story and it doesn't stop there. In July 2022, Paul Richard Alexander
will have been reliant on his iron lung for an
astonishing 70 years. At the grand old age of 76, he's once again confined
to the machine full time. From here, he eats, drinks,
sleeps and even works, but he refuses to let the situation get him down to the
point where he's become a global inspiration.
In 2014, he was honored to be
accepted into the rotary club, a global service organization
who are working on projects to help end polio once and for all. – And congratulate you on
choosing to serve alongside us. – [Narrator] As happy as he looks, his life does come with its
fair share of challenges. The machine Paul now resides in is actually refurbished
because his original machine began to fail back in 2015. Spare parts have been out of
production for decades because no one expected that someone
who needed an iron lung would ever live as long as Paul has. But fortunately, Paul
has an amazing friend who helped him post this video
on YouTube, asking for help. Luckily, one heroic
engineer came to the rescue and supplied Paul with
everything he needed to keep on living his best life. Since then, Paul has amazingly
gone on to achieve even more. While working as a lawyer, he recently finished an
eight year long venture to write his memoir called
Three Minutes for a Dog, which was released in 2020.
But what's even more
amazing is that he typed out the whole thing by
using a rod in his mouth to tap away at his keyboard. How incredible is that? Although Paul is the only
person to kick polio's butt and lived to tell the tale, more famously America's 32nd
president Franklin D Roosevelt was diagnosed with polio in
1921 when he was 39 years old. He was unable to walk without
the use of braces or crutches, and sometimes used a
wheelchair to get around.
Much like Paul Alexander though, he didn't let his disability stop him. He was elected in 1933 and
is the only US president to have served more than
two full terms in office and he didn't let that time go to waste. In 1938, he spearheaded America's movement to fight back against polio by founding the National Foundation
for Infantile Paralysis. And by doing this, he
actually helped develop the world's first polio vaccine. Using his presidential power, Roosevelt appealed to
the public for donations to research a polio vaccine.
Then famous TV personality Eddie Cantor jokingly told the nation
to send just one dime each to the White House to help the cause. To Roosevelt's surprise, the White House was then flooded with mail and they received a
whopping 2,680,000 dimes. That's over $5 million in today's money, which Cantor cleverly
coined the March of Dimes. But for all of this money, nobody seemed to be able to get any closer to producing the fabled polio vaccine. Years passed, the second
World War came and went, the Cold War began, and yet every year, polio
remained a constant threat, but the March of Dimes kept going, raising more and more
money to find a vaccine with every year that passed. People were so determined
to beat the deadly virus that one fundraiser by
the name of Mr. O'Connor tirelessly raised half a
billion dimes for the cause. That's so many dimes that
if you lined them up, you would have to walk, swim, and climb the entire circumference of the earth two and a quarter times
before you ran out.
That's exhausting just to think about, but when 1952 rolled around and the world was in the midst of the worst
polio epidemic ever recorded, people were fed up. Donation after donation had
been made for the last 14 years and still no cure had been found, but that's when Jonas Salk
walked into the picture. He'd been leading research
on the March of Dimes ever since 1949, but in 1952, he had a major breakthrough. While conducting tests on monkeys, he found that those he had
injected with a new formula were suddenly immune to the virus. Wasting no time, Salk
started testing his vaccine on a group of 43 children and
after this went well, in 1953, he vaccinated his own children too. He was obviously pretty
confident in himself. Sadly, the vaccine came
just a few months too late to help poor Paul
Alexander, but it did go on to save countless lives.
In 1954, Salk rolled out the
biggest vaccine test of all. Huge field trials were held across the US involving the vaccination of
1.8 million school children against the deadly disease. These children were known
as the polio pioneers and became a beacon of
hope for the whole world. On April 12th, 1955, the results were announced
and it was revealed to worldwide praise that the
vaccine was safe and effective. After decades of research, millions of dollars and
countless lives lost, the end of polio was finally in sight. People queued in roads to get vaccinated, and what's more, Salk's
vaccine was then improved upon by researcher Albert Sabin. By 1961, an oral version of the vaccine was put into circulation that just needed to be
squirted onto a spoon, making it easier than ever to administer. The results were astonishing. In the two years before the
vaccine was widely available, the average number of polio
cases in the US was over 45,000.
By 1962, that number had
dropped to just 910 and by 1979, it had been eradicated completely. As of October 7th, 2020, the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention reported that there were just 441
cases of polio worldwide. However, the impact of this vile virus is still felt across the globe. It's estimated that there
are 300,000 polio survivors living in the US alone and about 10 to 20 million
survivors worldwide. Iron lungs went out of production long ago as the world got vaccinated, but Paul Alexander is one of
the very few still in tuned by the bulking machines. For him and so many others, polio has been a tough
life-changing disease, but Paul's story stands as a testament, proving that no matter how many hardships might come your way, you
can always overcome them if you have the determination to do so. Well, have you been inspired
by Paul's amazing story and how well do you think
you'd cope inside an iron lung? Personally, I don't think
I'd last five minutes, but let me know in the comments below and thanks for watching.
(upbeat music).
