Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Remembering Polio

Never thought about it but the folks sure did.

Got that treatment as well as the smallpox scar.

I went to grammar school on an Indian reservation in southern Arizona. Got the polio vaccine and in later years the sugar cube treatment. Got vaccinated for smallpox and tested every year for TB. Seems they were constantly poking us with a needle or testing us for some disease.

I had it but was one of the lucky ones....

I remember it. And iron lungs. And the problems associated with it. And now the very late problems that have become evident, decades after the acute infection.

My experience was much the same. We saw the pictures of the rows of iron lungs in Life (?) magazine in 1952-53 and got immunizations (both vaccine and oral) as soon as they became available. Classmates with braces were maybe 1 per 200 students, as best as I remember, and we didn't know all the details about deaths. I have friends today who are still dealing with braces and/or disfigurement; most consider themselves fortunate and I privately regard them with a high degree of respect.

Rotary International, as CCCC mentioned, decided in 1985 to eliminate Polio with a world-wide project, Polio Plus . The goal was to get every vulnerable person vaccinated by 2000. The CDC and the World Health Organization endorsed that plan. The vaccine could be mass-produced for as little as 3 cents per dose and Rotarians raised the money to buy the vaccine and volunteered to go to the very corners of the earth to vaccinate.

"Since 1985 Rotary and its partners have helped reduce the number of cases from 350,000 annually to fewer than 400 in 2014, and they remain committed until the disease is eradicated. Rotary has contributed more than $1.3 billion and countless volunteer hours to protect more than 2 billion children worldwide. In addition, Rotary's advocacy efforts have played a role in decisions by donor governments to contribute over $10 billion to the effort." <https://www.rotary.org/en/historic-moments-polioplus-turns-30>

Today there are only three countries in the world with new cases of Polio (Nigeria, Afghanistan and Pakistan); the biggest obstacles to complete eradication appear IMHO to be cultural and political resistance.

I have a very expensive bumper sticker on my old Tahoe "Goodbye, Polio. Thanks, Rotary". Rotarian since 1977, happily retired now.

I remember taking the sugar cube in school.

My mom had polio in her left shoulder and arm when she was thirteen. You can kind of see in the pictures that her shoulder and arm are smaller than the other one. Her hand is crippled a little bit but she can still use it some. Growing up I never gave it a second thought. She'll be 94 on Sunday.

The Polio Plus project, as mentioned, was started by Rotary International, and is also heavily supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation. To the tune of billions of $ per year.

A good map of the current status of Polio can be found here: http://polioeradication.org/polio-today/polio-now/

The last reservoir of wild polio virus (WPV) is primarily in the Pakistan / Afghanistan border areas, and is proving to be very difficult to erase. Suspicion of vaccination teams is high, and the fact that a CIA team surveiled Osama Bin Laden's hiding place disguised as polio vaccination workers has, naturally, increased that suspicion. Vaccine workers have been injured, and killed. They are, in my mind, saints.

The story in Nigeria is much the same, with Muslim "clerics" denouncing polio vaccines as work of the devil, condemning those who listen to a real hell on earth. Fortunately, most mothers have more sense than clerics and many find ways to vaccinate their children, at huge risks to their own lives.

I lived it. My cousin came down with it and we were all exposed and quarantined. In my teen years doc told me I probably had a less severe case of it and my right side had quit growing for about 6 months.That has plagued me all my life.

My Grandma on my Dads side got it in the late 1920’s she grew up to be a nurse for 50 + years. She saw it all, from the people getting it with no cure to the Polio vaccine and almost total eradication of the disease. Even with all her experience with the disease my Mom would argue that vaccines are a government conspiracy.

She lived to see smallpox deaths decrease from 15 million a year to zero by the end of the '70's. That's the kind of conspiracy we need.

Like Reloder, I had an uncle who contracted polio and survived well into his 80s. His legs were pretty useless, but his arms and chest were so powerful he could hold himself out horizontal from a post. He worked a full career as a mailman, even though he couldn't get out of his truck. Helluva guy. I miss him tremendously.

Polio, scarlet fever, tuberculosis, mumps, and even the occasional case of cholera were very much around and on people's minds in the 50s. It was a rosy, golden era - in nostalgia. If you lived it, not so much.

Yes Rocky. Go my first Yellow Fever shot 1952. Possible outbreak in the area.

I had polio in 1944 when I was four years old. Both legs were paralyzed . Was in a hospital for about 5 months but got the Sister Kenny treatment which was hot and wet blankets wrapped around my legs and frequent but painful stretching of my legs. I came out of it with no damage to my legs.

There were two hospitals that took polio patients but only one used the Sister Kenny approach. I got very lucky in getting in the right hospital. If not I would have been in a wheel chair for life. But I got a complete recovery .

Steve

one of my high school teachers had polio as a child. As a result, his right leg was about 4" shorter than his left one.

Normal left shoe but the right one looked like something that the band KISS wore. It didn't seem to bother him much....only had a slight limp but he was a miserable prick.

The students called him "Peg leg Ned"

The banker that gave me my first loan had a shoe like that. I had forgotten about him. He was a good man!

Yes I'm 65 and remember the sugar cubes. I forgot what they.were for until now. Thank you so much for bringing this up. Thinking about this brought up a memory of my mother. My mother was on the school's PTA board and helped to organize the distribution. I remember her handing me my cube and the look on her face. Again thank you! To revive a memory like this is precious. Also, I did have a friend with polio. He overcame it and was a star player on our JR. High football team.

I remember it. I came down with it in 1952,-- the peak year for it. Upper back, neck, and shoulders. I was lucky, with the only lasting effect being pisspoor posture but I did see other kids die and remain in iron lungs. Even though that bout supposedly conferred immunity, I took both the Salk and Sabine vaccines when they were offered. While we're mentioning childhood diseases, I also had most all the others,-- mumps, measles, whooping cough, and whatever, but since then I have seldom been sick.