20/10/2026
The iron lung didn’t just exist. It breathed for people. For decades. Martha Ann Lillard caught polio in 1953 on her fifth birthday. Within days her breathing muscles failed, and a metal cylinder kept her alive for most of the next 73 years. She died at 78, after a lifetime shaped by a virus with no cure — and a vaccine that arrived too late for her. In 1952 the U.S. saw more than 57,000 polio cases, over 21,000 with paralysis, and more than 3,000 deaths. Parents skipped pools and cinemas because a summer day could end in a wheelchair. Then came the vaccine in 1955. Cases collapsed. By 1979, wild polio transmission in the U.S. was gone. Vaccination is what changed the story.
