To help patients with severe lung lesions, such as emphysema, tuberculosis, chronic bronchitis and polio, breathe, brothers Philip and Cecil Drinker of Boston developed the iron lung in 1929. The equipment consists of a metal chamber which, by the action of a motor that moves a piston, generates alternately overpressure or depression at regular intervals. The pressure and the respiratory rate is controlled by the doctor from the control panel. The lungs receive the effects of artificial respiration through the passive movement of the walls of the rib cage.
Except for the head, the patient's body rests inside the tank-shaped apparatus and is hermetically isolated from the outside by a collar or cuff fitted around the neck.
