Reading up on the polio scare in the 1950s

[Ohiogal]

On Wikipedia.

Was talking with Mr.O yesterday about past family members, and he recalled that he had an aunt who had polio and was permanently disabled from it. He was very young when it happened and doesn’t remember much about what happened to her. I wondered if people who were disabled from polio and couldn’t hold a job received any kind of government disability payments and he did not know. Does anyone here know if they did?

Anyway, there’s an excerpt on Wikipedia from the book “A Hole in the World” (unfortunately a book written about a childhood of abuse). It sounds quite timely.

*****

“Polio was a plague. One day you had a headache and an hour later you were paralyzed. How far the virus crept up your spine determined whether you could walk afterward or even breathe. Parents waited fearfully every summer to see if it would strike. One case turned up and then another. The count began to climb. The city closed the swimming pools and we all stayed home, cooped indoors, shunning other children. Summer seemed like winter then.[14]

Richard Rhodes, A Hole in the World

[hlthe2b]

1. You should read up on the last remaining Iron Lung "survivors"... Most have no idea that some people

lived their whole lives in them, even when manufacturers stopped producing parts and standard of care was to perform a tracheostomy and put them on modified ventilators (though the long term prognosis was not likely to be free of serious infection and risk of death, causing many to prefer their iron lungs).

https://people.com/health/polio-survivor-last-3-people-use-iron-lung/

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

2. I remember it. I was just a little kid, but my mom, who was a nurse,

was totally freaked out about it and wouldn't let us go swimming in late summer because of polio. She had taken care of polio patients in the late '40s before there was a vaccine, and she had stories about kids in iron lungs, which scared me too (as I think it was intended to do). When the Salk vaccine came out she hauled us kids to the doctor to get the shots even though we howled and complained because we hated shots. That's when the iron lung stories were brought up. A college friend (late '60s) still had a brace on one leg from polio.

[Ohiogal]

5. I remember getting the Sabin oral vaccine.

We lined up outside the local elementary school to get our sugar cube with the vaccine on it.

I remember hearing about iron lungs but maybe I was too young to appreciate how scary it was.

[MiniMe]

10. That's the one I got

Though I got it from the doctor.

[DeminPennswoods]

11. In the first cohort of babies to get the Salk vaccine

starting in 1955.

[dflprincess]

12. I remember my Mom getting ready to take us to the doctor for our boosters (pre-Sabine vaccine)

I also hated shots and had staked out a hiding place under my bed. Mother, rather than arguing, sat on my bed and reminded me that our next door neighbor had had polio and "If you want to wind up in a wheelchair like Mrs. X, that's up to you."

Well, I laid there for a few more seconds before I decided I did not want to wind up in a wheelchair and crawled out from under the bed.

Smart move on Mom's part.

[dflprincess]

3. Social Security disability did not start until 1956

so I doubt there was much help available.

[Ohiogal]

6. Thanks, that's what I was curious about.

I guess if you were disabled as an adult, you were taken in by family members, unless you had no one to stay with ... then what happened to you?

[Lars39]

13. Poor farms, maybe, if you were able to do anything.

[LeftInTX]

14. If she had her SS quarter hours, she could have been eligbile when the act was passed in 1956

It doesn't take many hours for eligibility.
However, you do lose your hours once your stop work. (Unless the law provided some type of retroactive eligibility)

ETA: I don't know when SSI was started. This would be a program for people who do not have their SS quarters and limited income (I am thinking it was probably an LBJ program, but I could be wrong)

[Wellstone ruled]

8. Most of the Kids I

knew who contracted Polio did not receive Benefits until after the Social Security Disabilities Act was enacted. Most did how ever worked a regular type of Job in our area. Do remember the local School formulating programs for all those in our School in order to be employed at Desk Jobs or for some minimum dexterity on the job training.

Only knew of two whom had to do the Iron Lung thing at Sister Kenny in St Paul,my best friend was able to kick the Polio with only a Hair loss side effect. Another Girl from our area a friend of my Sister,who was eight at the time. Spent here life in a Lung.

[progree]

4. Highly RECable. Someone said "I don't remember anything like this ever happening before" referring

to Covid19, and I said the one thing I can think of was polio back in the 1950's. (aside from the 1918 flu pandemic).

[Glorfindel]

7. I remember the polio scare of the 1950's...

Collecting dime for The March of Dimes. I think polio was usually called infantile paralysis at that time, but I'm not sure about that. I got the Salk vaccine in 1957 and quit worrying about polio, but there were plenty of other things to worry about at that time. I was in school with a few kids who had had polio and were left with various disabilities. I don't know anything about their receiving any government assistance, but probably not.

[Timewas]

9. I do recall

All of that as a child/teenager in the '50s every summer it hung over us like a cloud.. constantly concerned and now and then hearing of a friend who got it..

[Alex4Martinez]

15. My mom born in 1926 had polio, both legs in braces, worked a full career.

Attended UC Berkeley, never gave up.

No government funding.

By the way, the polio scare lasted decades, it wasn't limited to the 1950s.

[flotsam]

16. Twice in this thread posters have used the term "polio scare"

It was not a "scare" people died and were permanently disabled. It was an epidemic that took children. Using that term strikes me as minimizing a national tragedy.

edited to add:At its peak in the 1940s and 1950s, polio would paralyze or kill over half a million people worldwide every year. Wiki

[Ohiogal]

19. Not the best choice of words

Sorry ...I didn’t mean to minimize or downplay anything, that wasn’t my intention at all.

[MineralMan]

17. It wasn't a scare. It was a real threat.

I was born in 1945, and one of my earliest memories is of an emergency room in Arizona. My parents took me there while driving to visit my maternal grandparents and I barfed in the car. Since that was one of the early symptoms of polio, I ended up in an emergency room at age 5. I didn't have polio, but that's just how scared people were.

My brother-in-law did get polio. He's the same age I am. He recovered fully from it, but other kids died from polio in the small California town where I lived. When the Salk vaccine became available, every child in that town lined up for their shot at the Veterans Memorial building in that town. We lined up again for the booster shot.

Polio is now almost completely eradicated globally, now. It is almost like smallpox today, which no longer exists on our little blue ball in space.

Through technology and science, we have eliminated the threat from many diseases and lessened the threat from many others.

It wasn't a scare. it was a real threat. COVID-19 is like that. We'll beat it, too, but not before it kills a lot of people. It's not a scare, either. It is a disease that kills.

[Ohiogal]

18. OK not the best choice of words.

I apologize, I didn’t mean to minimize it or downplay it

That wasn’t my intention at all.

[flotsam]

20. Of course you didn't

and there's no need to apologize. I've seen the term printed elsewhere and it always struck me as the kind of framing the GOP would use. They're already using covid "hoax" and if they can move it into a covid scare they will and blame Democrats...

[Ohiogal]

21. Thank you flotsam

I’ll be more careful from now on.