At the age of six in 1952, Paul Alexander developed polio, which left him paralyzed from the neck down. Due to the illness, he was unable to breathe on his own, so the doctors decided to put him in a metal cylinder, where he spent the rest of his life. He went on to publish a memoir, obtain a law degree, and practice law.
“Paul Alexander, ‘The Man in the Iron Lung‘, passed away yesterday,” a post on a fundraising website said.
“In this time Paul went to college, became a lawyer, and a published author. “Paul was an incredible role model.”
Philip Alexander, his brother, described him as a “big smile” that immediately made people feel comfortable and as a “welcoming, warm person.”
“He was just a normal brother to me. We fought, we played, we loved, we partied, we went to concerts together – he was just a normal brother, I never thought about it”, he said to the BBC.
Philip expressed admiration for his brother’s independence despite his illness, which prevented him from carrying out daily activities like feeding himself.
“He was the master of his domain, helping people to help him,” Philip continued.
In the last few weeks, Paul’s condition worsened, and the brothers bonded over pints of ice cream during his last days.
“It was an honor to be with him in his last moments,” Philip said.
Who was Paul Alexander, ‘the man in the iron lung’?
When he fell ill in 1952, Dallas, his hometown, doctors performed surgery on him, saving his life. But because of polio, he was unable to breathe on his own.
The solution was to put him in an iron lung, which is a metal cylinder that surrounds his body up to his neck.
He referred to his lung as his “old iron horse” because it gave him breathing ability. Bellows forced his lungs to expand and take in air by sucking the air out of the cylinder. His lungs deflated when the air was released because the same mechanism worked in reverse.
Alexander eventually mastered independent breathing, enabling him to briefly exit the lung.
He was not anticipated to live long, like the majority of polio survivors who were given iron lungs. However, he lived for many years, even after the polio virus was virtually eliminated in the West in the 1950s with the development of the vaccine.
After completing his high school education, he enrolled at Southern Methodist University. He graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a law degree in 1984. He spent two years practicing law after being admitted to the bar.
In 2020, he said to the Guardian, “I knew if I was going to do anything with my life, it was going to have to be a mental thing.”
