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Ipswich Hospital Museum: Polio in Ipswich (Transcription)
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Jane: We did have polio in Ipswich, of course, and polio myelitis is inflammation of many, poly, myelitis, of the muscles and the nerves of the body.
What that meant was, when people developed polio they developed paralysis and people could develop paralysis of just limbs or weakness in limbs, or if it was very severe, then you would get total paralysis.
Not having the ventilators that we have today in hospitals, they had to invent what they called the iron lung.
We had a couple of iron lungs here at the Ipswich Hospital and patients were admitted to here and if they couldn't breathe themselves they were placed inside an iron lung.
One of the patients who was here for a long time, about seven years in an iron lung, was Hazel Clark.
She developed polio, she was engaged to be married and she went down to Brisbane with her sister, to buy her trousseau, came back from Brisbane, and a couple of days later her sister started to show symptoms of polio.
She was admitted to the ward and 24 hours later Hazel was admitted to the ward as well.
They're in the same isolation area, both in iron lungs, and the next day her sister died and Hazel was in the iron lung herself and she remained in that iron lung for seven years.
Her fiancé was coming up to visit her, she realised that she probably wouldn't survive, or if she did it would be a long term thing.
She released her fiancé from from his promise.
She would have been about 21-22 at the time, so she would have been about 28-29 when she passed away.
It's an interesting story that Dr Lew Edwards, who was a doctor here and also a politician, he was an electrician from the Edwards here in Ipswich, so he was an electrician here at the hospital and Hazel built up quite a liking for him because if ever there was a problem with the iron lung or with the power supply to the iron lung, Dr Edwards, or in those days Mr Edwards would come and deal with the situation, so there was good of a bond with them there.
If the power did go off, for any reason, there was a foot pedal that you could pump the bellows with to keep the the iron lung working, so you were hoping like crazy that the power was not going to be off for any huge length of time.
Of course the iron lung was a huge box shape with just the head component in it that did the breathing for the patients.
Once the paralysis was there, it was there pretty much for good.
Melanie: Dealing with bed sores and the pressure sores ...
Jane: ... would all have been issues for somebody like like Hazel, yes.
There was a lady in Melbourne who died in 2009, and she'd been in an iron lung for 60 years she was 83 years of age when she died.