Do you remember getting the Salk polio shot back in '55 or '56?

[Klaralven]

I have a vague recollection of lining up with other kids in a school gym. It was not at the primary school that I attended, but my parents took me to a different town to get the shot. I can't recall that there was any paperwork involved, but I suppose that my parents signed a permission.

[tblue37]

1. Yes. I remember the sugar cubes & also the smallpox vaccine.

[In_The_Wind]

12. I have a scar from the vaccine shot.

[tblue37]

16. My smallpox vaccine scar has faded over the years. (I am 70.)

[Hekate]

62. We're close in age. Once when I was taking advantage of community flu shots at a health fair...

...the middle aged nurse administering my shot called over a young nursing student and pointed out my dime-size smallpox scar. It was kind of fun to be Exhibit A in an impromptu medical lesson.

I actually met someone at my university from Afghanistan who had survived smallpox in his childhood. The scars were terrible. We had a fair number of foreign students there in the 1960s and early 1970s, when I was there, including a contingent of Afghan students. It boggled my mind that someone born in the 20th century to a well-off family — in any country — could have missed this common life-saver.

[myccrider]

64. I'm in y'all's age group, too.

But most can’t see my small pox vax scar because they stuck me in the butt! It’s faded to a barely visible blotch, anyway.

I don’t remember getting either shot - polio or small pox - I remember getting the sugar cube, though, yum.

[Hekate]

63. We're close in age. Once when I was taking advantage of community flu shots at a health fair...

...the middle aged nurse administering my shot called over a young nursing student and pointed out my dime-size smallpox scar. It was kind of fun to be Exhibit A in an impromptu medical lesson.

I actually met someone from Afghanistan at my university who had survived smallpox in his childhood. The facial scars were terrible. We had a fair number of foreign students there in the 1960s and early 1970s, when I was there, including a contingent of Afghan students. It boggled my mind that someone born in the 20th century to a well-off family — in any country — could have missed this common life-saver.

[yellowcanine]

32. Sugar cubes was the oral Sabin vaccine. Came later.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

46. Sugar cubes were several years later.

[BainsBane]

2. Everyone gets polio vaccines

That’s how the disease has been eradicated. Well, everyone except the antivaxers.

[Polybius]

44. I think it stopped by the 70's

I know that when I got my shots in the late 70's, it was only measles, mumps, and rubella.

[leftyladyfrommo]

3. I did. We had to stand in line at the high school and we got

sugar cubes.

[SCantiGOP]

18. Me too

Sugar cube.
And then, 15 years later, there we’re sugar cubes with LSD in college.

[MizLibby]

4. I dont recall the shot but I remember the SABIN

vaccine on a sugar cube.i think 57ish

[Ms. Toad]

5. A bit later, and it was sugar cubes.

(1960-ish).

We went as a family.

[themaguffin]

6. I wasn't born until the early 70s, but being from the Pittsburgh area, it was a big deal

as Salk worked on it at Pitt.


Conservatives always talk about the way things used to be, but can you imagine if they did vaccinations at a school?

They would FLIP out.

[efhmc]

25. They had free immuization shots at the local library in Houston. This was in an upper

middle class area. The line was very long. Done before school started in late summer. THEY WERE FREE.

[MineralMan]

7. Yes, I remember lining up at the Veterans Memorial building in

my small California town to get my shot. It wasn't optional, at least for this kid.

[Dave in VA]

8. Yep!

Both the sugar cube and the injection.

[CTyankee]

9. I'm older so as a little kid I remember the Polio scare and our neighborhood pool being closed

due to the polio epidemic. I was bummed that I couldn't swim that summer. It was several years until the vaccine was developed.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

29. Me, too.

Mom hauled our little asses to the doctor for vaccinations as soon as they became available, and I remember howling like a banshee because I had to get a shot. Too bad, she said.

[Politicalgolfer]

10. On a sugar cube

...in the basement of neighborhood elementary school.

[LiberalArkie]

11. Yea, The nurse would fill up the big steal syringe out of the vial and would stick 1 arm

and then the next arm, and would keep going until she ran out and would fill it up again and continue. It is the reason why most boomers probably have Hep C.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

31. Most boomers don't have Hep C, and that's definitely not

how I or anyone I know of got the vaccine.

[LiberalArkie]

54. It is one of the heps. My doc said that she did not need to test for one of them as it was assumed

that by my age that I would have it.. But that is how it was done down in South Arkansas in those days.. They did not have disposable needles back then.

[Sneederbunk]

13. Yes. Was in the Second Grade and got in line with my classmates.

Kept the disposable syringe without needle for years. Read only recently that it was kind of an experiment.

[lisa58]

14. I remember a sugar cube that was distributed..

In a school on a Saturday in the early’60’s

[N_E_1 for Tennis]

15. We got it on sugar cubes...

I had to be in 1st or 2nd grade. That was around 1961 or 62. Remember the red drop on the cube. At that time I was in Chicago.

[Submariner]

17. The local catholic church opened the school basketball court

and auditorium for the shots. I just wish it was available a month sooner when my legs were paralyzed from polio. Eventually fully recovered.

[napi21]

19. Oh yea. Stood in line in the school cafateria and they did us one byu one. n/t

[lark]

20. I got mine in 59 ir 60, FL is always slow because they hate working class folks.

[Greybnk48]

21. Yep. My sister and i walked to the doc near our house (1956) when I was 8 in PA.

We had also just gotten our smallpox vaccines about two years before, also in PA.

We moved to Wisconsin and they had us all get a second smallpox when I was 14. It was administered at our small high school lobby, and I don't recall why it was deemed necessary, but we all did it.

They came in and tested us all for TB at one point too.

My brother got the Sabin oral polio vaccine in '65, on a sugar cube. A large vaccine operation was set up in the gym of our H.S., since this was open to the public. ALL WERE FREE.

[yellerpup]

22. Yes., I do

First grade and the first shot I didn't cry about.

[icwlmuscyia]

23. I don't so much remember the actual shot. I do remember my parents relief

that we no longer had to worry as much about polio.

I remember getting whacked on the noggin when my mother caught me trying to drink from a drinking fountain. Also swimming pools were verboten until I was around 6 or 7

[frazzled]

24. I don't remember getting it at school

(I would have been 5 or 6), but I'm pretty sure I got it at our pediatrician's office.

But I don't remember a lot.

I just googled and realized I lived in the city where Eli Lilly Company, who produced the Salk vaccine, was located, so access to the vaccine might have been very high. Also, reference to an article from the local newspaper, “Thrilled by Salk Success, Indiana’s Doctors Act to Immunize 270,000,” from the morning of April 13, 1955. So that confirms my suspicion that I got the vaccine from the doctor, and not in a mass inoculation at school. Could still be wrong.

[pamdb]

26. Polio

I would have been 4. Don’t remember a thing.

[NRaleighLiberal]

27. it was the sugar cube for me!

(no, not with LSD!)

[NoRoadUntravelled]

28. All the families in our district lined up at our elementary school.

It was 1962. There were several tables set up in the gym and each family lined up at the table that corresponded to the first letter of their last name to get the oral vaccine.

[cwydro]

30. I only remember the sugar cube.

I remember a lot of vaccinations in those days because we traveled frequently.

Still have a faint scar from the smallpox vac.

[LAS14]

33. Yup. I more vividly remember my mother's anxiety about whether we could...

... go to an event in Chicago, and her keeping me home from the town pool. I wonder if masks would have helped??

[Turbineguy]

34. A long line of kids

in the cafeteria. There were a few who did not get the vaccine on religious grounds. They were different. But tolerated.

[Hortensis]

35. Late 50s in school. We all compared our raised reaction

spots over the next days, but mine was almost nonexistent, so I had to admire those with really good ones.

[GoCubsGo]

36. No, but I remember getting a Rubella vaccine this way.

It was the late 1960s, and they had just come out with needle-free "guns." I vaguely recall transporting paperwork prior to lining up in the school hall.

I do remember getting a polio booster in the doctor's office. It cam in the form of an ampule of sugar water.

[yellowcanine]

37. I remember it being given to other kids but I didn't get it. (1957). Maybe my mom didn't sign?

Maybe there was a cost or maybe some were wary because it was so new?

[Mossfern]

38. Yes, I remember lining up in the hallway of our elementary school.

We were all very anxious because were were going to get a "needle." By the time the oral vaccine came out, I had been fully inoculated so I never had the pleasure of a sugar cube vaccine.

[OregonBlue]

39. Yes, and all the other vaccinations. A public health team came to our school every year and made

sure all kids were up-to-date on vaccinations. That was in Hood River, Oregon.

[Mollyann]

40. 1955-1956 school year.

I was in fourth grade. We lined up in the hall outside our classroom and got the injection. A team of nurses pushed a cart of supplies down the hall going from classroom to classroom. Several years later when the oral vaccine was introduced we had moved. We went to the high school gym and received it there. It must have been in the summer because I remember my mother taking me and my younger brothers and sister.

[peggysue2]

41. I do remember

There was never any argument over the vaccinations because polio and small pox were massive, frightful scourges. For the first round of the polio program we were lined up in the cafeteria (if I remember correctly) and all given a tiny paper cup with a sugar cube inside. For smallpox, I'm pretty sure my mother took us to the family doctor because she insisted we have the shot on our upper thigh. She was concerned about the scarring.

I do not recall any pushback on these vaccinations. But then, I was a kid, not into the politics of the day.

[flor-de-jasmim]

42. Sugar cube and injection

[marie999]

43. I received mine in elementary school. It was free as was the Sabin vaccine.

[central scrutinizer]

45. We've forgotten how terrible childhood diseases were

I went to a family reunion a few years ago and people compared branches of the big family tree. Most families back 100 years ago or more lost children. One family had nine children, two survived to adulthood. I’m 70 and had chicken pox, measles, and mumps. One of our neighbors had a daughter who had polio.

[Klaralven]

47. A friend of a relative survived for some time in an iron lung and then died

I can't imagine living in an iron lung. It was the ultimate lockdown.

[ananda]

48. Yes. I was in second grade.

..

[trackfan]

49. I got the Sabin sugar cube in the early 60s.

It was given out at the High School.

[State the Obvious]

50. Yes. I was a sensitive, shy child who worried about everything.

Lined up in school gymnasium, but only if we had signed permission slip from parent. (elementary school - South Suburban Chicago) The needle didn't bother me. I was afraid of getting polio and having to wear leg braces, or even worse being put inside an "iron lung". Huge public health issue - Vaccines - ventillators

Sounds familiar. History repeating itself?

https://www.historyofvaccines.org/content/iron-lung

[DeminPennswoods]

51. Was in the very first cohort of babies to get the polio

vaccine in 1955. My mom kept the vaccination certificates.

[Wounded Bear]

52. Not really. I remember getting some shots at school. It would have been later, though...

Born in '52, so was young then.

Probably got it somewhere along the line.

[Demonaut]

53. I was just an egg in line

[Cicada]

55. Yes, I remember.

We lined up in school. I don’t think there was any paper work, no individualized record. In my class room we just all lined up and took turns.

[GeorgeGist]

56. Yep ...

I was part of the initial trial in Michigan.

[kskiska]

57. I received mine at our doctor's office

Two shots and a booster. Younger kids got lucky with the Sabin vaccine on a sugar cube in school.

[Arkansas Granny]

58. Yes. In rural SW Missouri where I lived, the county health department dispatched nurses to

some of the larger schools in the district and we were taken there to get the shots. No charge. Everyone got the vaccination.

[Hekate]

59. I remember it vividly. LIFE magazine was full of photos of kids in iron lungs...

...during the last great epidemic. Every single school had its quota of kids in heavy metal and leather braces — forever. No ramps, no elevators.

So when the injections became available, every parent in town, with few exceptions, lined their kids up for this new lifesaver. The Anti-Vaxxer Shit was confined to a few fringe religious sects.

It never occurred to me to wonder what my parents paid or if they paid until I was well into my adulthood. We had no money. I realized the vaccination program had been free.

In my town, Kailua, Oahu, the site for the clinic was Kainalu Elementary, where my brother and I went. It was after dark, and the line of parents and children went from the classroom, out to the playground, all across that, to the gates, and on down the sidewalk a long way.

There were 4 of us kids, and my little sister was needle-phobic and threw a tantrum of epic proportions when she saw what was coming. And you know what, Anti-Vaxxers? My mom held her tight until she got her shot.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

60. Yes, I got something saying I was a "Polio Pioneer", so, a guinea pig.

It was a much-feared disease, and still is. Some of the victims recovered, then, years later, got Post Polio Syndrome and are suffering with it still.

[DFW]

61. I remember that it hurt

Dr. Milton Stein in Alexandria, Virginia.