Iron lung

To a polio victim who can no longer breathe for himself nothing is more disheartening than the thought of spending every hour of his life flat on his back in an iron lung.

Most criminal cases, when I was practising, were paid for by SLAB, which kept a vice-like grip on the purse strings, paying a pittance no self-respecting plumber would get out of bed for, so an iron lung (bung) was the order of the day when dealing with the professionals of the underworld.