A Paralyzing Fear The Story of Polio in America
This documentary examines polio’s physical and emotional costs and highlights those at the forefront of finding its cure.
Polio and Iron Lungs in the 1950s. Le Clercq’s Illness.
Ballerina Tanaquil Le Clercq contracted polio while on tour in Europe in 1956. She was hospitalized in Copenhagen, where an iron lung kept her breathing and her husband George Balanchine stayed to care for her.
Kansas City polio survivor is one of last iron lung users in U.S.
For 36 years, Mona Randolph, 82, has slept six nights per week in a 75-year-old, 700-pound and 6-foot-long iron machine . She couldn’t breathe without it. By Shelly Yang
The Last Few Polio Survivors – Last of the Iron Lungs
Paul Alexander is one of the last few remaining polio survivors that depend on iron lungs—half-century-old machines that force inhabitants to breathe.
NYTimes article of Martha’s passing (may require an account )
Martha Mason: 60 Years in an Iron Lung
She wrote a memoir, Breath: Life in the Rhythm of an Iron Lung, which was published in 2003. She was also the subject of Martha in Lattimore (2005), a documentary film by Mary Dalton. Mason also appeared in the Oscar-nominated documentary about polio The Final Inch (2009).
Read of her passing in https://www.deseret.com/2008/5/29/20255096/woman-who-spent-life-in-iron-lung-dies
Polio Revisited part 3
Dianne Odell of Jackson, Tennessee has lived in an iron lung longer than anyone alive. She tells the story of the day she fell ill with polio and describes what it’s been like to live her life in an iron lung and why it is the only way for Dianne and others like her to survive.
The Polio Crusade
The story of the polio crusade pays tribute to a time when Americans banded together to conquer a terrible disease.
