Al is on vacation. This column was first published in November of 2012.
It is the summer of 1916; Boys Scouts of America are formed, U.S. troops under General “Black Jack” Pershing invade Mexico chasing revolutionary Pancho Villa, Coca-Cola brings the current Coke formula to market, Dwight “Ike” Eisenhower marries Mary “Mamie” Geneva Doud in Denver Colorado, Vladimir Lenin proclaims that Imperialism is caused by Capitalism, Germany launches final offensive in the Battle of Verdun, the first of three fatal shark attacks occur near New Jersey shore (four would die), Babe Ruth is mowing down batters as a rookie pitcher for the Boston Red Sox, and New York City is struck by a strange epidemic.
Ultimately, thousands of children in New York State, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut take to their sick beds. At first, the illness seems to be a common cold accompanied by a headache and sudden chills. Then, without warning, paralysis sets in, ranging from stiff joints to total body immobilization. Worst-case patients are suddenly unable to breathe or swallow, and often, death follows as quickly as the illness had begun. By summer’s end, 9,000 children show symptoms of the disease. Nobody understands the illness. The strongest children are more susceptible than the weakest senior. What did this mean? How could this happen? What could it be?
In the absence of clear, effective information from health authorities and medical experts, the public panicked and reacted hysterically. They blamed the usual scapegoats: the poor and the newly immigrated. Autopsies of the dead showed “inflammation of the anterior spinal cord,” and the disease got its name: poliomyelitis. To the public, it was Polio, Infantile Paralysis, the crippler of children. As suddenly as the summertime disease appeared, with the first frost, it disappeared. But that summer, polio was a killer. Twenty-seven thousand cases of polio had been reported in 26 states between June and December of 1916, resulting in 6,000 deaths. Eighty percent of those affected were children under five. From that summer on, not a single year would pass without an epidemic of polio.
Two years later, in 1918, a world wide pandemic of influenza struck. In the U.S. alone, 600,000 people died, a hundred times more than were killed by polio. Unlike influenza, whose victims either recovered to lead a normal life or died, many polio survivors were left with terrible reminders of the disease; twisted backs, withered limbs, bodies that no longer could run and play. They were a visible reminder of the disease that had come from nowhere, had no known treatment or cure and threatened to invade every household to attack our children. It was a parent’s worst nightmare to be sure.
No one knew how polio was spread, but they assumed that, like most diseases, it was spread from person to person. When polio came to Indianapolis, isolation and quarantine were the chosen remedies. School and church events were cancelled, children were confined to their homes. During the hottest days of summer, pools were closed. Movie theatres were closed by order of the health department and city drinking fountains were abandoned. Parents grew to dread the coming of summer realizing that there was nothing they could do to safeguard their children.
Every summertime sniffle, cold, muscle cramp, or routine temper tantrum a child exhibited were now viewed as potential symptoms of polio. Physicians and nurses made house-to-house searches to identify all infected persons. Children suspected of being infected were immediately taken to hospitals and the child’s family quarantined until they were no longer potentially infectious. In many cases, this quarantine meant they could not go to their own child’s funeral if the child died in the hospital. Shockingly, during the height of the epidemic years, people believed the chief threat of polio to be paralysis and not death.
Polio was never the worst disease in our state. Other contemporary diseases like typhoid and influenza killed many more. But polio was different in that it targeted the innocent among us; children. Real progress in the diagnosis and treatment of the disease wasn’t seen until Hitler was marching across Europe on his way to World War II. The face of polio changed when the March of Dimes took the war against this disease out of the hands of a few stalled researchers and doctors to take the battle to the people. Just as Victory Gardens, scrap metal and paper drives and civilian air wardens gave Americans the power to fight the Axis Powers on the home front, donating, soliciting and collecting dimes empowered the average American to battle polio from their homes. And the General issuing the marching orders on both fronts was none other than President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
The March of Dimes was founded by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on January 3, 1938. Roosevelt was himself diagnosed with polio in 1921, a year after running for Vice-President alongside James M. Cox of Ohio, and it left him unable to move his legs. At the age of 39, Roosevelt was left with severe paralysis and, although largely unknown by the public at the time, spent most of his presidency in a wheelchair. FDR’s foundation was an alliance between scientists and volunteers, with volunteers raising money to support research and education efforts. The new war against polio quickly mirrored the war against the Axis Powers. Polio had always seemed cruel in the way that it targeted children. Now it was viewed as downright hostile. It seemed that for every step the March of Dimes advanced, polio gained strength to meet it. Early attempts to develop a life-saving vaccine ran into numerous hurdles. A vaccine tested on 10,000 children by two researchers at New York University proved ineffective and left nine children dead. Other vaccine trials used “volunteers” at mental institutions, including experimentation at our own Central State hospital. By the early 1950s, polio epidemics were rising faster than the population, and keep in mind, this was during the height of the baby boom.
Then, like a knight in shining armor, came Dr. Jonas Edward Salk. In 1948, while at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Salk undertook a project funded by the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis to determine the number of different types of the polio virus. Salk quickly extended the scope of the project to include the development of a vaccine to cure polio. Salk assembled a skilled research team devoted to finding a cure that would occupy his every waking moment for the next seven years. That work culminated in a field trial set up to test the new “Salk vaccine” described as “the most elaborate program of its kind in history, involving 20,000 physicians and public health officers, 64,000 school personnel, and 220,000 volunteers.” Over 1,800,000 school children took part in the trial. When news of the vaccine’s success was made public on April 12, 1955, Salk was hailed as a “miracle worker,” and the day nearly became a national holiday.
Salk’s sole focus had been to develop a safe and effective vaccine as rapidly as possible, with no interest in personal profit. When famed CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow asked Dr. Salk in a television interview who owned the patent to the vaccine, Salk replied: “There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?”
Al Hunter is the author of several books. His newest books are “The Petersen House, The Oldroyd Museum and The House Where Lincoln Died,” “Bumps in the Night. Stories from the Weekly View,” “Irvington Haunts. The Tour Guide,” and “The Mystery of the H.H. Holmes Collection.” Contact Al directly at Huntvault@aol.com or become a friend on Facebook.
