Last American polio survivor in an iron lung dies at 78

respirators, but for Lillard, nothing worked like the bellows of the iron lung.

“I tried all of them,” she said. “None of them could get up to 21 pounds (per square inch), which is what I needed to breathe. So they just weren’t effective.”

Lillard was able to live outside the iron lung. In her healthiest years, she climbed in only to sleep, about nine continue reading …