On October 12, 1928, doctors at Boston Children’s Hospital used the first iron lung, a sealed chamber designed by Philip Drinker and Louis Agassiz Shaw that used shifting air pressure to move air in and out of a patient’s lungs. It kept polio patients alive for decades, and this polished 1950s-era machine belonged to Barton Hebert of Covington, Louisiana, who used it from the late 1950s until 2003. Photographed in 2004 for the CDC’s Global Health Odyssey (via Wikimedia Commons), U.S. government work, public domain.