| HOME |
| POLIO
AND AMERICA |
| EARLY PREVENTION AND TREATMENT |
| THE POLIO
VACCINE |
| AMERICA AND THE VACCINE |
| BIBLIOGRAPHY |
Polio
Epidemic of 1916
Although polio has sporadically plagued the earth for thousands of years, isolated cases did not show up in the United States until the late nineteenth century. Even then, it was considered a "medical rarity" as doctors spanned entire careers without seeing a single case of polio.2 However, this changed in 1916 when the first polio epidemic hit the United States, killing and crippling thousands of Americans.
The polio epidemic of the summer of 1916 appears to have begun in Brooklyn, New York when a limited number of children awoke one morning unable to move their arms or their legs. Desperate, their parents rushed the stricken children to neighborhood health stations, but the doctors and nurses were puzzled by the various symptoms.3 As the days passed, the cases continued to steadily increase. By the end of June, the professionals finally recognized that they were facing an epidemic of infantile paralysis or polio.4 But, the doctors could not explain it, accurately diagnosis it, treat it, or prevent it--circumstances that enhanced the public's fear and uncertainty, especially since most Americans in the early twentieth century believed that they were living in a new age of science and medicine. As the disease spread, and doctors could not provide effective help or knowledgeable answers, many Americans concurred with one Philadelphian who wrote that "the ignorance of the medical profession in this instance is appalling, and is quite sufficient to cause lack of confidence and distrust toward the whole profession."5
Out of confusion and lack of control and understanding of polio, scientists turned to the usual scapegoats of disease and epidemics in America: immigrants and their slums. However, this explanation was not tied solely to rampant nativist sentiments of the early twentieth century; it was based also in the Progressive Era's emphasis on sanitation and hygiene. Scientists and medical professionals claimed that the simple explanation for the spread of polio was the apparent filth and overcrowding of the immigrant neighborhoods. The disease then reached the middle- and upper-classes through direct contact, flies, or animals like cats and dogs.6
Ironically, as scientists eventually would come to understand, polio was, according to polio historian Jane Smith, an "inadvertent by-product of modern sanitary conditions."7 As a result of public sanitation efforts and closed sewer systems, Americans had a dramatically decreased possibility of being exposed to the polio virus as infants, resulting in non-immunity for children and adults. Thus, polio defied traditional demographics of disease. It struck blacks, immigrants, and native Americans whether urban, suburban, or rural, clean or dirty, rich or poor, and young or old (although the largest percentage of cases were elementary school-age children). By December of 1916, the polio epidemic had spread from New York City to twenty-seven states along the eastern seaboard and into the mid-west. Over the course of seven months, out of twenty-seven thousand reported cases of polio, six thousand people had died, and thousands more would be paralyzed or deformed for the rest of their lives. After 1916, the United States did not escape a single summer without an epidemic, although some years were far worse than others.8
Franklin
Roosevelt and the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis
The history of polio in
America changed dramatically in 1921 when a
robust, rich, and ambitious thirty-nine year-old New York Assemblyman
named Franklin Delano Roosevelt contracted polio, leaving him
permanently paralyzed from the hips down. After a few years of
uncertainty, struggle, and rehabilitation, Roosevelt, as noted by Jane
Smith, transformed his
"paralysis from a physical weakness to a source of political and
spiritual strength."9 He
rallied, in an
unprecedented
but enormously successful way, the American people, philanthropists,
and scientists in a fight against polio. Due to these
efforts, Smith argues that it is hard to imagine Salk's polio vaccine
without a
polio-afflicted Franklin Roosevelt.10
In
1924, Roosevelt
traveled to a resort in Warm Springs, Georgia for hydrotherapy
treatments. By 1926 he had bought the resort, but it proved to be
a great financial burden. Driven by the suggestion of his law
partner Basil O'Connor, he established the Warm Springs Foundation as a
not-for-profit organization. The goal of the
foundation,
according to Roosevelt, was to create "one vast national crusade
against infantile paralysis" for research, diagnosis, after-treatment,
and rehabilitation.11
When Roosevelt was elected
Governor of New York, he assigned O'Connor to take over leadership of
the Warm Springs Foundation. Although O'Connor was wary of the
task, once saying that we was "never a do-gooder,"12
he turned
the war against polio, as noted by one historian, into a "sacred banner
he would carry to the
death."13 In 1937, when
Roosevelt
announced the
establishment of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, he
appointed O'Connor to lead the larger polio effort. Under his
leadership, the National Foundation became one of history's most
successful health organizations, raising millions of dollars through
national fundraising campaigns, especially the March of Dimes, that
targeted the generosity of ordinary Americans.
Over the course of the following two decades, the Foundation raised
enough money to subsidize the hospital and rehabilitation costs of any
polio patient, to train nurses and physical therapists in polio
treatment and rehabilitation, and to sponsor scientific and medical
research for preventative measures, including the work of Dr. Jonas
Salk.14
Polio After World War II
Despite the national
attention to polio and the increased understanding
of the disease, the number of cases did not wane substantially.
In fact, in the decade following the Second World War, polio reached
its highest levels in American history. Although these years
following the war are often considered America's golden age of hope,
prosperity, and national prestige, they were marked also by fear--new
fears of communism and nuclear war, and the old fear of polio, now more
so than ever.
The heightened fear of polio was predicated on the
explosion of polio cases that continued to disproportionately attack
children: in the five years following the war, at least twenty thousand
cases were reported annually; in 1952, polio reached its destructive
peak with fifty-eight thousand new diagnoses. A second primary
factor that triggered an intensification of the fear was the post-war
baby boom. Not only were there a greater percentage of children
who were at risk for polio, there was also a larger cohort of parents,
the group who most feared "the crippler." This fear, however, was
converted into a reinvigorated effort to combat the disease through
education, donations, and volunteer work.15
After years of
research marked by trial and error, failures, setbacks,
and pivotal discoveries, a polio vaccine was developed finally by Jonas
Salk. Beginning in 1954, close to two million American children,
called Polio Pioneers, had participated voluntarily in massive field
trials across the country.16
The results
proved to
be conclusive. Subsequently, on April 12, 1955, the polio vaccine
was announced to be a success. The victory over polio was nothing
less than
monumental and unprecedented. In less than fifty years, the
dreaded disease, as well as the fear instrinsically tied to it, were
conquered with the polio vaccine, an embodiment of the collaborative
effort of generous Americans, resolute scientists, and forward-thinking
charities.