Paul Alexander, who contracted polio and lived with an iron lung for 70 years, passed away on March 11, 2024, at the age of 78.
Alexander was a successful and inspirational professional lawyer and disability rights activist despite his physical limitations.
Dallas, Texas-born Paul Alexander was born in January 1946.
Thousands of children were affected by the American polio outbreak that started in the late 1940s and continued into the following decade throughout his boyhood.
1952 was the year with the highest number of cases of polio reported, and it was also the year that the disease permanently altered Alexander’s life at the age of six.
Alexander was admitted to Parkland Hospital in Dallas, along with hundreds of other youngsters who had contracted polio. The hospital included an iron lung ward for patients.
Among those who were paralyzed and placed in an iron lung, which was a somewhat popular medical device at the time, was Alexander.
But he refused to allow this persistent paralysis to ruin his life.
Despite recovering from his original polio infection, Alexander was left paralyzed and only able to move his head, neck, and mouth for the remaining 72 years of his life.
In the 1950s, being placed in an iron lung meant that independent breathing was also removed due to this paralysis.
Over the course of Alexander’s life, substitute ventilators were created, but he never used them.
Alexander managed outside the chamber by teaching himself how to “frog-breathe” when he was in the hospital by suckling air down his neck.
According to our thorough research, Paul Alexander was not married and had no children at the time of his passing. There is no information about his family including the identities of his parents.
