When I was young they called those machines 'iron lungs'...and some people lived in them....
A small point — “Iron Lungs” were commonly used to help people with polio breathe, but they are different machines from today’s ventilators.
An “iron lung” was a negative pressure ventilator which enabled a person to breathe on his or her own in a normal manner, when muscle control is lost, or the work of breathing exceeds the person’s ability. Need for this treatment may result from certain diseases (e.g. polio, botulism) and certain poisons (e.g. barbiturates, tubocurarine). The negative pressure ventilation (decreasing surrounding pressure to induce inhalation then repressurizing to 1 bar (15 psi) has been almost entirely superseded by positive pressure ventilation (forcing air into the lungs with a pressure greater than 1 bar then allowing the body to naturally exhale before repeating) or negative pressure cuirass ventilation.
To achieve negative pressure over the whole body, you had to be placed INSIDE the machine.
“When I was young they called those machines ‘iron lungs’...and some people lived in them....”
I noted that they basically paralyzed him and put him in a coma to have him on a ventilator.
With the “iron lung” you were concious, I believe.
I wonder which is better for the patient.