According to the WHO,

Polio is a highly infectious disease that attacks the nervous system and can lead to ... respiratory paralysis, and in some cases death. ...

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, frequent epidemics saw polio become the most feared disease in the world. A major outbreak in New York City in 1916 killed over 2000 people, and the worst recorded US outbreak in 1952 killed over 3000. 

Many who survived the disease faced lifelong consequences. Deformed limbs meant they needed leg braces, crutches or wheelchairs, and some needed to use breathing devices like the iron lung, an artificial respirator invented for treatment of polio patients. 

By the mid-20th century, the poliovirus could be found all over the world and killed or paralysed over half a million people every year. With no cure, and epidemics on the rise, there was an urgent need for a vaccine. ...

[It was not until] the early 1950s, the first successful vaccine was created by US physician Jonas Salk.

That vaccine came too late for Paul Alexander.

Sky News reports:

Paul Alexander, widely known as "Polio Paul," contracted the viral disease [Polio] in the summer of 1952 when he was six years old and was left paralysed from the neck down. He was rushed to hospital in Texas - and woke up inside the metal cylinder where he would spend the rest of his life. ... An update on his GoFundMe page by its organiser Christopher Ulmer reads: "Paul Alexander, 'The Man in the Iron Lung', passed away yesterday [March 11, 2024].

An iron lung is a type of negative pressure ventilator (NPV), a mechanical respirator which encloses most of a person's body and varies the air pressure in the enclosed space to stimulate breathing. It assists breathing when muscle control is lost, or the work of breathing exceeds the person's ability.

Have you ever experienced the performance of a world-class symphony? I don't mean listening to music through tiny white earbuds, or even your fancy home theater system.  That would be listening to the music. I'm talking about experiencing it!

There is a major difference between listening to a recording of Mozart and experiencing it live at the symphony hall. The notes may be the same, but our awareness of the conductor and each of the members of the orchestra, and the distinct movements and sounds of various instruments is completely lost when we only hear a recording of the sounds. There is something about seeing the music created before our eyes that results in a sense of wonder and exhilaration. Rather than thinking of the music as a technically satisfying product, we experience it as a profoundly incredible work of art.

I took my wife to the Pacific Symphony for a Christmas concert last year. Famous songs I had heard hundreds of times before came to life as I watched the 50-piece orchestra create the melodic sounds of Silent Night and Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas. It was amazing to pan across the stage and see each of these unique and gifted musicians, playing individual notes on their instruments that resulted in this incredible symphony of sounds that filled the concert hall.

When they did Sleigh Ride and they got to the second verse where you hear the “Giddy up, giddy up, giddy up let’s go. Let’s look at the show. We’re riding in a wonderland of snow.” I noticed the percussionist using two wooden blocks to make the clop, clop sound of horses running that you hear in the background of the song. I wouldn’t have even noticed this guy hidden way in the back with his wooden blocks in hand, except that he was featured on the giant video screen in the hall as the camera zoomed in on him making his clop, clop sound.  I had never realized how important this little additional sound in the background was to enhancing the rich texture of the melody and the life-like experience of the song.

The British journal of medicine reported in July of 2018 that a woman in England had 27 contacts removed from her eye.  She would put them in but wasn't always able to find them, so she just assumed they had fallen out. 

Actually, the lenses were slipping to the back of her eye and getting stuck.  She just kept adding new ones in, and they piled up. But despite having 27 lenses in her eye, her vision was not 27 times stronger.