Note: The following is excerpted from the book “…..in Sickness or in Health…..”, written/edited by Frederick J. Blahnik.
Polio Outbreaks in the Early 20th Century
“The fear of polio was a fear of something you had no defense against, something that hit without logic or reason. Yesterday, it was the man down the block. Today it could be you or your children.”
—Larry Alexander, 1954
Poliomyelitis was without doubt the most dreaded common disease facing the world in the first half of the twentieth century, oftentimes hastily reaching epidemic proportions and thereafter raising absolute havoc. Effects of the malady manifested not only amongst those unlucky enough to come down with the refractory sickness, but it additionally engendered terrifying angst and fear amongst those who were NOT directly afflicted.
Polio struck hardest in the months of July, August, and September, and seemingly surfaced at random irrespective of geographic region or an area’s population density. The disease caused tremendous alarm and generated near hysteria, principally because no one knew the means by which the ailment spread or why children were far more susceptible to contracting it than adults. Furthermore, there was no effective antidote to combat the pernicious, fast-spreading organism which fathered polio, only some essentially medieval treatments targeted at symptoms the germ produced.
The first known polio outbreak in the United States occurred in Vermont in 1895. In 1916 New York City experienced its first large-scale polio epidemic, resulting in 9,000 confirmed cases and 2,343 deaths. The nationwide toll for that landmark year was 27,000 polio cases, resulting in a staggering 6,000 deaths. The number of polio cases and fatalities stemming from this insidious disease increased each decade thereafter, finally culminating in 1952 with 57,628 recorded polio cases.
In the midst of a polio epidemic, individual rights were often at odds with the prevailing public requirement for general safety. Travel between infected cities was closely monitored and restricted, and public health officials vigorously quarantined infected homes to ensure exposed individuals were effectively removed from all public contact. Inasmuch as these officials were dealing with the unknown and typically operating in a state of ongoing near-panic, an established protocol for length of quarantine was never firmly established, although the efficacy of sequestration as a means of retarding passage of the polio organism from person to person was never empirically demonstrated to any reputable epidemiologist’s satisfaction. There was also frequent enforced separation between family members during the early acute phase of the polio disease process, lasting anywhere from ten to fourteen days.
Hospitals treating polio patients operated under strict, orderly regimens, while nurses enforced military-like discipline on their wards to guard against casual transmission of the deadly poliovirus. When a polio epidemic was at its apogee, everyone associated with caring for patients was under an enormous amount of stress owing to the inherently bleak prognosis facing the sufferer. Moreover, this morbid drama was further heightened by the pathogen’s relatively easy transmission to hospital help staff. A depressing situation indeed, and one that was lastly exacerbated by a little voice in the background invariably whispering in everyone’s ear that the poliovirus was king, that it was omnipotent, and that there was no cure for it in sight.
That is, until the decade of the 1950s prayerfully dawned, bringing with it immunology saviors Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin and a rapturous, long-overdue end to the cruel madness. [1]
[1] The factual information found herein was largely derived from the Internet website http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polio Outbreaks.
