DALLAS _ The machine is what people see first. The submarinelike metal cylinder dominates the room, rhythmically humming and pulsating as it helps keep Paul Alexander alive.
It is simple but effective: A big tube, a motor, a moving arm. As the paralyzed Dallas lawyer lays inside, his head protrudes from a velvety, airtight closure at one end, propped on a pillow on a height-adjusted table.
Alexander has spent much of his life in a can, a childhood victim of a once-epidemic disease that menaced the nation and now leaves him at the mercy of a mechanical respirator. Though unable to move from the neck down, he refused to be limited by his metal prison, finding success in both the classroom and the courtroom.
At the University of Texas at Austin, where he earned his bachelor's and law degrees, students crowded his open dorm door and gawked. Later, clients visiting his home waited awhile before they ultimately asked: What is that thing you're in? Is it a sauna?
No, he would say. It's an iron lung. I had polio as a kid.
Then, some would ask: What's polio?
