Are any of you old enough to recall when Polio was public enemy #1 in the U.S.A.?

I've been reading a book on the history of Polio in the U.S. and the competition between Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin to come up with the first effective vaccination. It certainly was a very scary time for many people. As late as 1952 there were 58,000 new outbreaks of polio which resulted in some 3,000 deaths in the worst cases when the disease affected the respiratory system. Apparently the "polio season" was late Spring thru the summer.

Did you know people who got the disease? and what happened in the communities where it happened?

And I think by 61 the polio vaccine was the oral version. I had the series of shots (3 I think) and then about 1961 or 2 the oral on a sugar cube.

and it affected her the rest of her life!

One of her legs is just a tiny bit shorter than the other, but I grew up knowing how fortunate she was to have survived it.

iron lung that enabled her to breath. Then she was never supposed to be able to stand or walk. She did both.

I recovered with no lasting problems, he had to use crutches to walk

:shrug: I will never forget the pain and complete inability to move my legs one morning when I was about four years old. I don't seem to have any problems today even though the doctor told my parents at the time I would eventually lose my ability to walk. I am in my mid sixties now and still trucking.

1953 OR SO

My cousin had polio and was never able to walk without a crutch after that. Another relative had a mild case of polio and was not affected for life.
A school friend had polio and to this day has a limp (one leg withered) but is able to walk. His case was considered a miracle because at one point the doctor told his father he would probably not make it.

My mother kept us home during the "epidemic", we couldn't go swimming or to any place where there was a crowd. We were terrified for one whole summer. Early that spring, before polio was raging in our area, we went to the county fair. There was an iron lung at the fair that scared the patooties out of us until we saw the person for whom the lung had been breathing sitting at a food stand eating a hamburger.
For those who don't know, the 'lung' would breath for a person whose muscles were paralyzed so that they couldn't breath on their own.
The polio vaccine was a wonderful wonderful thing.

lung during the epidemics.

told in print/movies/etc. I wonder (yes I know google is your friend)

was affected in the 40's and 50's now. While the folks who survived and many lead normal lives, the body remembers and comes out in forms of heart disease--or any problem that affects the nerves (and therefore the muscles as if the nerves are dead the muscles weaken). I have been a nurse for many years, and now am in education and have not looked into it specifically although I run across articles about how nursing homes are gearing up to care for this post-polio population.

I do not know of a specific book by or about the nurses who cared for them. sorry.

They acted like it was a huge necessity, but it really wasn't by that time.

They really did make a big deal out of it.

It was very scary. I knew several people who had it and one lived in an iron lung for many years until she finally passed away about 15 or so years ago. She was allowed out of the lung for short periods of time. She raised a family.

We weren't allowed (by our parents, mostly) to go to public swimming pools or drink from water fountains. In fact, it took me years to drink from water fountains at school. At one point, I got a stiff neck and my parents were frantic. We had been out of town for the week and I was apparently homesick. As soon as we turned toward home, the stiff neck went away.

I have also heard of people who have had the symptoms return in later life, but I don't know if that is true or if they had something similar.

I'm glad your friend was at least able to get out, even for short periods of time.

There was a large mirror which could be moved to see all parts of the room where her daughters and husband spent much of their time.

Ironically, shortly after she died, her husband developed ALS and died.

He contracted it in about 1960. He was paraplegic and had some difficulty with speech.

I also have a bar buddy that has some trouble walking as a result of polio. She's about five years older than I am.

(I turned 51 in February.)

When polio cases reached a certain number in the area, quarantines were effected. Movie theaters and swimming pools were closed, and people were told to avoid crowds whenever possible.

I never saw an actual iron lung but did see pictures of it. They were the predecessors of ventilators. Just seeing the pictures of them gave me the creeps.

I did know a boy a few years younger than I who had polio. He was confined to bed for quite a long time, then walked with crutches and always walked with a limp afterward.

that everyone who was suffering from the after-effects of polio was my age or older.

I was in the hospital for pneumonia when I was five years old, and I still remember the nurse wheeling me around to visit the other children, including a girl in an iron lung.

and I went to highschool with a girl in a wheelchair from polio. the boys always helped get her up and down the stairs.

my brother and I were not allowed in public swimming pools, or anywhere there was crowds of people.

the news and pictures of adults/kids in a roomful of iron lungs, etc. were everywhere.

my kids were pre school when the free sugar cube with the preventive in it was given out at Fire Stations in Upper Marlboro, Maryland. I was very glad.

because it had been pretty much controlled by the time I was born in 1967. I do still have the vaccination scar on my upper arm.

Sid

I grew up in a really dysfunctional home. There was loads of abuse, but one of the worst
tragedies was the total lack of meaningful communication between my mother and I.

She married a complete abuser--and I think she totally shut down. She couldn't be real
with any of her children.

I know that my mother had Polio as a child. I know that she was put into an iron lung
and that she was very sick and hospitalized for a long time. I know she mentioned that
she was paralyzed. I know that her left leg, from the kneecap to her ankle is about
half the size of her right leg.

She rarely talked about having Polio or her experiences. I can only imagine the hell
she endured as a child. It must have been so scary.

My own daughter, who is nine years old, has been listening to her teacher read a book
about a little girl who had and overcame Polio. My daughter comes home, and tells me
daily about this little girl and what she endured. There's so much that I didn't know
about the disease. It is sad to hear what these children experienced, but it has also
been healing to understand some of the experiences that shaped my mother's childhood--which
ultimately shaped her adult life--and her behavior as my mother.

My mother was very abusive and mean throughout my childhood. She rarely had a kind word
for me and I was hit frequently. Her childhood doesn't excuse her behavior, but four
years of therapy taught me that how my mother behaved--had nothing to do with me. That
realization was how I gained freedom from all of the pain.

Now, as I learn more about polio--I can't help but wish that I could have known
my mother as a child--and comforted her and gave her support that she probably didn't
get from her own abusive parents.

I feel so much love and the intense desire to protect my own children--and I feel sadness
that my mother had polio and didn't get the emotional support that she deserved as a child.

so many parents who turn out to be abusers were themselves abused as children--not merely physically but emotionally. It doesn't excuse what they did, but it perhaps gives a little more understanding as to why they were that way.

You speak of learning more from your daughter and her relaying of the story of the girl with polio, thus, understanding your mother. In doing so, you are bringing your mother back into your circle.

My children find it hard to believe that I can't recall a time when my parents said they loved me, but I knew they did. They didn't hug or kiss, but they worked tirelessly to make things better for us. I've never felt unloved.

Families are more demonstrative these days, which is good.

first vaccine shots.

My aunt contracted it and survived, but to this day she uses crutches. Her parents refused to let her be vaccinated.

He is in a wheelchair most of the time.

His childhood experience with polio is a story of courage. He was in an iron lung, in an institution for children with the disease. He realized (about six years old) that he would never get out of that machine unless he learned to breathe AGAINST it. And so he did. He strengthened his own lungs until he was out of the machine.

But he couldn't walk.

He was in a ward with dozens of paralyzed children. He taught himself to walk again by getting his feet out of the bed at night and pulling himself around his cot. Around, and around, and around, while others were sleeping.

The boy with such determination to live unfortunately became a cruel narcissist and abuser. But he did survive against odds.

when I was in kindergarten.

The superstitions were rampant. Any trip to the lake was accompanied by warnings. Then came the Salk vaccine. It was a miracle.

...I was a child in Ohio in the 1950s prior to any type of polio vaccine. My mom even had "polio" insurance on me ~~ just in case. In the summer, I was not allowed to play outside anywhere around standing water for any reason.

It was very scary. Everywhere there were pictures of iron lungs with someone inside who could not breath on his/her own because of having polio.

I am sixty. I have friends whoo survived it. I remember at least two who didn't. I remember the iron lung, and not going swimming, and yes, that magic sugar cube.

Scary time, and the joy when the vaccine was discovered.

we were warned about swimming in lakes and rivers in summer.

I started school in 1947 so there wasn't a vaccine then , nor (as I recall) had the polio scare started so I was just vaccinated at that time against smallpox. That was a real bad one !

Dr's Salk and Sabin were national heros when they came up with the vaccine, but the controversary about live or dead virus was really hot. Times were simpler them and a lot of people didn't understand how the live virus vacine could work without giving you polio.

The most famous polio victim was of course President Roosevelt It was believed that the hot springs and intensive exercise could relieve the symptoms and even cure polio , but of course it didn't cure.


My ex brother in law was crippled as the results of having polio as a child. In the 1950s it was not all that unusual to see the ravages of that horrible disease .

Vaccines have saved many lives and prevented much misery for the human race.

because of polio. One of my Dad's best friends died of polio. It seems at the time the vaccine was rationed and he had his children vaccinated first. The shots were a series of 3 injections and he had not received the last one when he became sick.

Several posters think their small pox scar is from the polio vaccine. As far as I know the polio shots were like any other injected inoculation and left no visible scaring unless there was a secondary infection. The small pox vaccine is not an injection but the skin is lacerated and purposely infected with the vaccine which makes a pox mark if it took. I had to undergo 3 of these when I entered school because they wouldn't take. I had been to Mexico as a baby and one shot gives immunity so the others did not work.

i did`t know anyone personally but i knew of people that had it. i got my shot in school the same year it was released

book about 10 yeas ago when I was doing some research for a paper on school health-historical.
One of the things I learned was that---it affected the well-off the affluent also. At the turn of the 20th century much focus was on the communicable diseases---the immigrants and dirt/disease/uncleanliness, ect ect. But this communicable disease cut across all classes--.

It'sa relatively small book, very readable.


Dirt and Disease: Polio Before FDR (Health and Medicine in American Society) by Naomi Rogers

when I was either in first or second grade in the early 1960s. I am not old enough to remember when the disease was at its peak in the early fifties.

Polio: An American Story by David M. Oshinsky is a great book and deserved the Pulitzer. I am assuming this is the book the OP is reading.

i was in elementary school (1956-1962). i vaguely remember one person having it just because i remember his braces. i think he might have been why my community held what was probably a county-wide drive to vaccinate. i will have to ask mom.

small pox vaccination was global also.

ellen fl

We are now in our 60s. He had it in his preteen years.

My Stepfather and I got horribly sick with a virus sometime around 1955 or so and for a couple of days polio was suspect. It scared the living shit out of my young butt.

It was mild THEN...Now he's truly suffering with post-polio syndrome. Anyone who thinks that the polio vaccines wasn't one of the greatest inventions ever is ignorant.

one kid from school every year. Some died, others went to the iron lung. I cannot recall the year, but I think we (kids) had a series of three doses - a red color liquid on sugar cubes - all mine were done at school.

graduated HS 1960, don't remember the "year of the sugar cubes", but it was before that

she is OK.

I remember parents using the iron lung as a scare tactic to get kids to do something. There were collection displays everywhere with a picture of a kid in the iron lung. Parents use to say, if you don't do this or that you will end up in the iron lung.

My parents, with their three daughters, were living out on a farm with dirt roads and one car between them. My mom told me that Nancy started complaining of a stiff neck and within 3 days was in the hospital diagnosed with Polio. The local hospital was ill equipped to care for her long term, so she was taken one and a half hours away to a hospital which was specializing in Children's polio. She did recover, but had developed curvature of the spine in a J curve shape. The current treatment was a full body brace, which they tried. The curvature began to get worse in my sister's teens. My mother found an article in the Ladies Home Journal about a doctor in New York named Dr. Wenger. He was pioneering a new surgery which cut the ribs away from the spinal cord on the outside of the curve and allowed the spine to form an S curve by attaching a surgical steed spreading bolt on the opposite side to create an S curve. The person's height was diminished, but the balance and aesthetic appearance was improved.

The Doctor and my mother sent reports and x-rays back and forth and Nancy was seen as a good candidate for the surgery. She became the 14th patient to have the surgery and my mom and dad took her to New York in 1954 when she was 14. There was a real danger of permanent paralysis, but she made it out fine. At home some 4 months later, the brace inside her back let go and they went back to do it all again.

Nan recovered, married, had two children and a wonderful life. She did have one anomaly in that when they cut away the ribs from her spine, she had some peripheral nerve damage and when she would get hot or winded one side of her face would turn red and the other side white with a clear line of demarcation between them. She also was diminished in strength and stamina.

We thought we had beat Polio, however when Nancy was 62 she found she had breast cancer and in the xrays it was seen her brace inside her back had again let loose. As the breast cancer did it's worst Nan became more bent over squeezing her lungs and internal organs. She died from effects of the cancer, treatment for the cancer, and long term effects of Polio, according to her death certificate.

My mother told me that when Nan was diagnosed the people in our little community treated the whole family much as Aids patients are treated, she said there was so much fear she could understand it, but she never forgot it.

When the Polio Vaccine was discovered my mother cried, we all got it at the local elementary school when the first dose went public.

when we were eradicating polio."

That's my pat answer to the anti-single payer people.

Yes, I remember getting the vaccines and what a big deal it was. I remember many polio victims from when I was a kid--mostly men with braces and crutches.

I have a newspaper from Dec 1961 I found in my attic. One of the front page stories is that San Diego county was about to wrap up its first full year with no new polio cases.

She has scoliosis, presumably as a result (I was too young to be aware of anything, and she is 65 now.)

When I was in elementary school the sugar cube vaccines were all the rage.

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I spent a week in the polio ward. No one really knew how it was transmitted back then, so all visitors had to wear masks, and I was surrounded by kids in iron lungs. I still have nightmares about it almost sixty years later.

That's one of the reason why the anti-vaccine crowd makes me really, really angry.

little paper cups. The gymnasium was absolutely packed with people of all ages. My cousin committed suicide just a couple of years ago when his polio, having returned in middle age, became too debilitating for him. He was a Philosophy professor.

In 1952 my family had been vacationing in Florida with my aunt, uncle and cousins who lived in Bradenton. On the day we were leaving to go home to Ohio, my aunt wasn't feeling well and thought maybe she had contracted the flu. She thought she would be okay, so we left and went on home. Shortly after arriving home, we got a call from my uncle who said that my aunt was in the hospital in an iron lung, had polio and was not expected to live through the night. Somehow my parents were aware of the trials that were being conducted with the polio vaccines and they rushed us out in the middle of the night to the doctor who gave us kids shots of the Salk vaccine, I believe it was, which had not yet been fully approved, but in our situation he thought it best to take the chance that it would work as we had been so directly exposed with kisses, etc.

Miraculously, my aunt recovered and was home in two weeks with no residual effects except for her tracheotomy scar. It was a very big story in the Bradenton newspaper, over several pages, because her doctors truly believed she wouldn't live, and that if she did she would be paralyzed for life.

I was only six at the time, but this is a very vivid memory for me.

who had polio. He and his twin sister lived a few blocks from me. He had to wear leg braces, so he apparently only had a mild case...

But it seemed like there were plenty of photos and film on TV showing people in those iron lungs.

My mother would use those to scare us into not bugging her about wanting to go swimming "too soon in the season". I was absolutely terrified of ending up living the rest of my life in one of those things.

:scared:


Don't remember any shots, but we did get the oral vaccine in the 60s.

They bused us to another school for a mass immunization program. That was the Salk vaccine. Before then, we had probably seen equal amounts of film footage of people in iron lungs and mushroom clouds. If polio didn't get you, the bomb would, and adults thought we should know. :scared: Your parents would keep you home from the movies and swimming if there was talk of polio going around. It must have been very scary to be a parent then, too.

Later, about 1961 or '62, my whole family went to my school's cafeteria one Sunday and took the oral vaccine developed by Sabin. I'm sure I must have had boosters, too, but I don't remember them like I do those first vaccine doses.

Most kids seriously affected by polio were not in public school but I did have a friend in junior high who had had polio and used crutches, knew more kids who'd had polio in college.

a scary one (at the time) where the device was held like a gun and the bottle of liquid serum was attached to it and it blasted the serum in your arm. All in the early sixties. I was born in 59.

It didn't affect my respiratory system. I was forturnate. I had to have therapy for my legs, but came of in pretty good shape. My friend was in a Iron Lung and died. Its affect have been showing up as I have grown older.

closed because of the threat of polio and how many cases had been reported. We alll knew about braces and iron lungs and little children on crutches. Many of us knew someone who had had polio and many of them were crippled by it. The March of Dimes was a big deal. Everyone put a dime or two on your card when you went around the neighborhood with it.

When the vaccine was made available, the county health dept. sent slips home with all the students for parents to authorize the vaccinations. They would set up a clinic at a centrally located school (this was in rural southwest Missouri) and we would all go there for the shots in pretty much assembly line fashion. I don't recall anyone at our school who didn't get the vaccine. Everyone was happy that there was some way to prevent this disease.

he survived without paralysis--but now he is susceptible to post-polio syndrome.

He's an obsessive athlete nowadays to try to evade symptoms. He's 61.

He was still able to join the Army during WWII and fight in the Pacific, but the combination of polio and crouching for days in foxholes damaged his legs terribly. He was pretty crippled up after that, but he worked a 360-acre farm and helped his dad with his farm for the rest of his life. He had horrible circulation in his legs, and I remember him having surgery where they cut the veins from his legs, cleaned them out, reversed them, and stitched them back in. It only helped a little, though; he died at age 60 of a clot in his leg that got loose and hit his heart. I had just turned 17.

When I was a kid, we were never able to go anywhere much where we had to walk--he couldn't walk that far. We would drive to OKC and go shopping at Christmas, and he would sit in the car and wait for us or walk around the car for a while. He must have had the patience of a saint, I swear. It just frustrated me when I was little, but now it just makes me really, really sad.

We got the vaccination by sugar cube--those were always fun! The nurse had to fight the kids away from those . . . .

Newspaper often had a list of new cases. Summer time was when it hit
the hardest. z

hated it.
Polio was a really terrible thing before that. People worried about it whenever the weather turned warm, worried about their kids or getting symptoms themselves if they were young.

Never even think about it now.

mark