History of polio
The history of polio (
The fear and the collective response to these epidemics would give rise to extraordinary public reaction and mobilization spurring the development of new methods to prevent and treat the disease and revolutionizing medical
Early history
The symptoms of poliomyelitis have been described by many names. In the early nineteenth century the disease was known variously as: Dental Paralysis, Infantile Spinal Paralysis, Creeping Paralysis, Essential Paralysis of Children, Regressive Paralysis, Myelitis of the Anterior Horns, Tephromyelitis (from the Greek tephros, meaning "ash-gray") and Paralysis of the Morning.[10] In 1789 the first clinical description of poliomyelitis was provided by the British physician Michael Underwood—he refers to polio as "a debility of the lower extremities".[11] The first medical report on poliomyelitis was by Jakob Heine, in 1840; he called the disease Lähmungszustände der unteren Extremitäten ("Paralysis of the lower Extremities").[12] Karl Oskar Medin was the first to empirically study a poliomyelitis epidemic in 1890.[13] This work, and the prior classification by Heine, led to the disease being known as Heine-Medin disease.
Epidemics
Major polio epidemics were unknown before the 20th century; localized paralytic polio epidemics began to appear in Europe and the United States around 1900.[1] The first report of multiple polio cases was published in 1843 and described an 1841 outbreak in Louisiana. A fifty-year gap occurs before the next U.S. report—a cluster of 26 cases in Boston in 1893.[1] The first recognized U.S. polio epidemic occurred the following year in Vermont with 132 total cases (18 deaths), including several cases in adults.[13] Numerous epidemics of varying magnitude began to appear throughout the country; by 1907 approximately 2,500 cases of poliomyelitis were reported in New York City.[14]
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.[15]
Richard Rhodes, A Hole in the World
On Saturday, June 17, 1916, an official announcement of the existence
Prior to the 20th century, polio infections were rarely seen in infants before 6 months of age, and most cases occurred in children 6 months to 4 years of age.[21] Young children who contract polio generally develop only mild symptoms, but as a result they become permanently immune to the disease.[22] In developed countries during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, improvements were being made in community sanitation, including improved sewage disposal and clean water supplies. Better hygiene meant that infants and young children had fewer opportunities to encounter and develop immunity to polio. Exposure to poliovirus was therefore delayed until late childhood or adult life, when it was more likely to take the paralytic form.[21]
In children, paralysis due to polio occurs in one in 1,000 cases, while in adults, paralysis occurs in one in 75 cases.[23] By 1950, the peak age incidence of paralytic poliomyelitis in the United States had shifted from infants to children aged 5 to 9 years; about one-third of the cases were reported in persons over 15 years of age.[24] Accordingly, the rate of paralysis and death due to polio infection also increased during this time.[1] In the United States, the 1952 polio epidemic was the worst outbreak in the nation's history, and is credited with heightening parents' fears of the disease and focusing public awareness on the need for a vaccine.[25] Of the 57,628 cases reported that year, 3,145 died and 21,269 were left with mild to disabling paralysis.[25][26]
Historical treatments
In the early 20th century—in the absence of proven treatments—a number of odd and potentially dangerous polio treatments were suggested. In John Haven Emerson's A Monograph on the Epidemic of Poliomyelitis (Infantile Paralysis) in New York City in 1916[27] one suggested remedy reads:
Give
Following the 1916 epidemics and having experienced little success in treating polio patients, researchers set out to find new and better treatments for the disease. Between 1917 and the early 1950s, several therapies were explored in an effort to prevent deformities, including hydrotherapy and electrotherapy.[citation needed]
In 1939, Albert Sabin reported that "In the experiments reported in the present communication it was found that vitamin C, both natural and synthetic preparations, had no effect on the course of experimental poliomyelitis induced by nasal instillation of the virus."[29][30]
Surgical treatments such as nerve
Iron lung
The first
During the polio epidemics, the iron lung saved many thousands of lives, but the machine was large, cumbersome and very expensive:
These drawbacks led to the development of more modern positive-pressure ventilators and the use of positive-pressure ventilation by
Passive immunotherapy
In 1950
The large-scale use of antibody serum to prevent and treat polio had a number of drawbacks, however, including the observation that the immunity provided by the serum did not last long, and the protection offered by the antibody was incomplete, that re-injection was required during each epidemic outbreak, and that the optimal time frame for administration was unknown.[43] The antibody serum was widely administered, but obtaining the serum was an expensive and time-consuming process, and the focus of the medical community soon shifted to the development of a polio vaccine.[46]
Kenny regimen
Early management practices for paralyzed muscles emphasized the need to rest the affected muscles and suggested that the application of splints would prevent tightening of muscle, tendons, ligaments, or skin that would prevent normal movement. Many paralyzed polio patients lay in plaster body casts for months at a time. This prolonged casting often resulted in atrophy of both affected and unaffected muscles.[5]
In 1940, Sister
In 2009 as part of the
Vaccine development
In 1935
Two vaccines are used throughout the world to combat polio. The first was developed by Jonas Salk, first tested in 1952 using the HeLa cell, and announced to the world by Salk on April 12, 1955.[46] The Salk vaccine, or inactivated poliovirus vaccine (IPV), consists of an injected dose of killed poliovirus. In 1954, the vaccine was tested for its ability to prevent polio; its field trials grew to be the largest medical experiment in history. In 1955, it was chosen for use throughout the United States. By 1957, following mass immunizations promoted by the March of Dimes, the annual number of polio cases in the United States was reduced, from a peak of nearly 58,000 cases, to 5,600 cases.[13]
Eight years after Salk's success,
Legacy
Early in the twentieth century polio became one of the most feared diseases of the developed world.[citation needed] The disease hit without warning and required long quarantine periods during which parents were separated from children: it was impossible to tell who would get the disease and who would be spared.[13] The consequences of the disease left polio survivors marked for life, leaving behind vivid images of wheelchairs, crutches, leg braces, breathing devices, and deformed limbs. However, polio changed not only the lives of those who survived it, but also affected profound cultural changes: the emergence of grassroots fund-raising campaigns that would revolutionize medical philanthropy, the rise of rehabilitation therapy and, through campaigns for the social and civil rights of disabled people, polio survivors helped to spur the modern disability rights movement.
In addition, the occurrence of polio epidemics led to a number of public health innovations. One of the most widespread was the proliferation of "no spitting" ordinances in the United States and elsewhere.[53]
Philanthropy
In 1921
In 1952, during the worst recorded epidemic, 3,145 people in the United States died from polio.[56]
Rehabilitation therapy
Prior to the polio scares of the twentieth century, most rehabilitation therapy was focused on treating injured soldiers returning from war. The disabling effects of polio led to heightened awareness and public support of physical rehabilitation, and in response a number of rehabilitation centers specifically aimed at treating polio patients were opened, with the task of restoring and building their remaining strength and teaching new, compensatory skills to large numbers of newly paralyzed individuals.[38]
In 1926, Franklin Roosevelt, convinced of the benefits of
The cost of polio rehabilitation was often more than the average family could afford, and more than 80% of the nation's polio patients would receive funding through the March of Dimes.
Disability rights movement
As thousands of polio survivors with varying degrees of paralysis left the rehabilitation hospitals and went home, to school and to work, many were frustrated by a lack of
As people who had been paralyzed by polio matured, they began to demand the right to participate in the mainstream of society. Polio survivors were often in the forefront of the
Polio survivors are one of the largest disabled groups in the world. The World Health Organization estimates that there are 10 to 20 million polio survivors worldwide.[61] In 1977, the National Health Interview Survey reported that there were 254,000 people living in the United States who had been paralyzed by polio.[62] According to local polio support groups and doctors, some 40,000 polio survivors with varying degrees of paralysis live in Germany, 30,000 in Japan, 24,000 in France, 16,000 in Australia, 12,000 in Canada and 12,000 in the United Kingdom.[61]
See also
- List of polio survivors
- Polio Hall of Fame
- Cutter Laboratories
- Hickory, North Carolina
- Polio eradication
Notes and references
- ^ PMID 16741562.
- ^ "History of polio vaccination". World health Organization. Retrieved 2024-04-10.
- ^ "Poliomyelitis". World Health Organization. Archived from the original on 2017-04-18. Retrieved 2016-04-13.
- ^ "Global polio eradication initiative applauds WHO African region for wild polio-free certification". World Health Organization. Retrieved 2019-08-29.
- ^ ISBN 1-878822-90-X.
- ISBN 0-674-01937-7.
- ISBN 0-665-26955-2.
- S2CID 245078983.
- ^ Robertson, Fiona. "'Disfigurement and Disability: Walter Scott's Bodies'". Otranto.co.uk. Archived from the original on 2014-05-12. Retrieved 9 May 2014.
- ISBN 0-300-06292-3.
- ^ Underwood M (1789). "Debility of the lower extremities". A treatise on the diseases of children. Vol. 2. London: J. Mathews. pp. 53–56. Retrieved 2020-05-27.
- from the original on 2008-09-17.
- ^ ISBN 0-7618-0144-8. Archived from the originalon 2007-04-03. Retrieved 2007-05-08.
- ^ Sachs B (1910). "Epidemic poliomyelitis; report on the New York epidemic of 1907 by the Collective investigation committee". The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease.
- ^ A Hole in the World. Simon and Schuster (1990).
- ^ "Reported paralytic polio cases and deaths, United States, 1910 to 2019". ourworldindata.org. 2019. Retrieved 2022-07-20.
- ^ from the original on 28 September 2011.
- ISBN 0-520-06396-1.
- ^ "Major U.S. Epidemics". infoplease.com. Archived from the original on 2011-12-15. Retrieved 2012-01-01.
- ^ "Polio epidemic strikes Northern Canada". CBC Canada. March 7, 1949. Archived from the original on 2008-06-18. Retrieved 2012-01-01.
- ^ a b Robertson S (1993). "Module 6: Poliomyelitis" (PDF). The Immunological Basis for Immunization Series. Geneva, Switzerland: World Health Organization. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2011-05-24. Retrieved 2014-01-13.
- from the original on 2008-12-07.
- doi:10.1615/CritRevPhysRehabilMed.v7.i2.40. Archived from the originalon 2007-08-06.
- ISBN 0-07-068328-X.
- ^ a b "History of Vaccines Website - Polio cases Surge". College of Physicians of Philadelphia. 3 November 2010. Archived from the original on 1 July 2014. Retrieved 3 November 2010.
- ^ Zamula, Evelyn (1991). "A New Challenge for Former Polio Patients". FDA Consumer. 25 (5). Archived from the original on 2011-06-04. Retrieved 2010-02-07.
- ISBN 0-405-09817-0.
- ISBN 0-300-06292-3.
- ISBN 978 1 137 29975 8, p. 164: "This time, there was no diplomatic solution. Sabin published what he had found, namely that vitamin C had no protective effect whatsoever in monkeys infected with polio intranasally.79 In response, Jungeblut produced a further paper, still insisting that vitamin C protected against paralysis – and then quietly moved into researching leukaemia."
- PMID 19870860.
- ^ ISBN 1-875412-05-0. Archived from the originalon 2007-04-22. Retrieved 2007-05-11.
- ^ OCLC 2078290.
- ^ PMID 9127546.
- ^ PMID 14374581.
- ^ a b Branson RD (1998). "A Tribute to John H. Emerson. Jack Emerson: Notes on his life and contributions to respiratory care" (PDF). Respiratory Care. 43 (7): 567–71. Archived from the original (PDF) on 1 July 2007.
- ^ a b Nelson R (2004). "On Borrowed Time: The last iron lung users face a future without repair service". AARP Bulletin. Archived from the original on 2007-09-27. Retrieved 2010-02-07.
- PMID 11179136. Retrieved 13 October 2016.
- ^ S2CID 40057889.
- ^ a b Staff of the National Museum of American History, Behring Center. "Whatever Happened to Polio?". Archived from the original on 2011-10-28. Retrieved 2010-02-07.
- from the original on 2007-10-23.
- PMID 11834636. Archived from the originalon 2007-09-29.
- ^ Wackers G (1994). "Theaters of truth and competence. Intermittent positive pressure respiration during the 1952 polio-epidemic in Copenhagen". Constructivist Medicine. Archived from the original on 2007-12-23. Retrieved 2010-02-07.
- ^ PMID 15855454.
- ^ "Unsung Hero of the War on Polio" (PDF). Public Health Magazine. University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health. 2004. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2010-06-11. Retrieved 2010-02-07.
- PMID 13183798.
- ^ a b Spice B (2005-04-04). "Tireless polio research effort bears fruit and indignation". The Salk vaccine: 50 years later- second of two parts. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Archived from the original on 2008-09-05. Retrieved 2010-02-07.
- ^ Bligh, Anna (10 June 2009). "PREMIER UNVEILS QUEENSLAND'S 150 ICONS". Queensland Government. Archived from the original on 24 May 2017. Retrieved 24 May 2017.
- from the original on 2008-02-04.
- ^ "The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1954". The Nobel Foundation. Archived from the original on 2008-12-19. Retrieved 2010-02-07.
- PMID 14440553.
- PMID 6371280.
- from the original on 2017-06-25.
- ^ See David M. Oshinsky, Polio: an American Story. Oxford University Press, 2005.
- ^ ISBN 0-19-515294-8.
- ^ "FDR and Polio: Public Life, Private Pain". Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Archived from the original on 2010-03-24. Retrieved 2010-02-07.
- ^ Dunn HL (1955). Vital Statistics of the United States (1952): Volume II, Mortality Data (PDF). United States Government Printing Office. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2017-11-13.
- ^ a b c Gallagher HG (2002). "Disability Rights And Russia (speech)". The Review of Arts, Literature, Philosophy and the Humanities. XXXII (1). Archived from the original on 2010-06-16. Retrieved 2010-02-07.
- ^ Rackl L (2006-06-05). "Hospital marks 80 years of treating kids for free". Chicago Sun-Times. Archived from the original on 2012-11-03. Retrieved 2010-02-07.
- ISBN 0-06-270055-3.
- ^ Scalise K (1998). "New collection of original documents and histories unveils disability rights movement". University of California at Berkeley News Release. Archived from the original on 2010-05-27. Retrieved 2010-02-07.
- ^ a b "After Effects of Polio Can Harm Survivors 40 Years Later". March of Dimes: News Desk. 2001. Archived from the original on 2014-12-25. Retrieved 2014-11-14.
- PMID 3749588.
Further reading
- Maus RA (2006). Lucky One: Making It Past Polio and Despair. Anterior Publishing. ISBN 0-9776205-0-6. A memoir by a childhood survivor of polio.
- McKay, George (2013). "Crippled with Nerves: Polio Survivors in Popular Music." Chapter 1. Shakin' All Over: Popular Music and Disability. University of Michigan Press. ISBN 978-0-472-05209-7.) A scholarly study of a key cultural impact by polo survivors.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link - ISBN 0-19-515294-8. Awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prizefor history.
- Paul JR (1971). A History of Poliomyelitis. New Haven, Conn: Yale University Press. OCLC 118817. Classic history.
- Shell M (2005). Polio and Its Aftermath: The Paralysis of Culture. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-01315-8. Memoir, history, medicine.
- Wilson DJ (2005). Living with Polio: The Epidemic and Its Survivors. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ] A history of polio from accounts written by survivors. Limited preview available from Google Books.
External links
External videos | |
---|---|
Presentation by David Oshinsky on Polio, June 21, 2006, C-SPAN | |
Presentation by Oshinsky on Polio, October 8, 2006, C-SPAN |
- A History of Polio (Poliomyelitis)—History of Vaccines, a project of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia.
- What ever happened to Polio? Archived 2007-06-07 at the Wayback Machine—An exhibit from the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.
- The Middle-Class Plague: Epidemic Polio and the Canadian State.
- CBC Digital Archives - Polio: Combating the Crippler—Video and radio reports related to polio
- Poliovirus in New Zealand 1915–1997 Archived 2007-09-28 at the Wayback Machine
- Polio: A Virus' Struggle—an amusing yet educational graphic novella from the Science Creative Quarterly (in PDF format).
- Fermín: Making Polio History—An article about Luis Fermín Tenorio Cortez, the last case of polio reported in the Americas.
- A UK Polio survivor—An account of John Prestwich who lived 50 years in an iron lung.
- Post-Polio Health International