The iron lung machine was invented by Phillip Drinker and Louis A. Shaw.  Originally used for treatment of coal gas poisoning, it found its most famous use in the mid-1900s when victims of poliomyelitis were  stricken with paralysis. The first iron lung was used on a polio victim on October 12, 1928 at Children’s Hospital, Boston, on a child unconscious from respiratory failure; her dramatic recovery, within seconds of being placed within the chamber, did much to popularize the "Drinker Respirator." Boston manufacturer Warren E. Collins began mass production of the iron lung that year. Entire hospital wards were filled with rows of iron lungs at the height of the polio outbreaks of the 1940s and 1950s. With the success of the worldwide polio vaccination programs beginning in the mid-1950’s which have virtually eradicated new cases of the disease, and the advent of modern ventilators that control breathing via the direct intubation of the airway, the use of the iron lung has sharply declined.