Posting #142

Pogo and Polio

The other day I was reading a collection of Walt Kelly's Pogo comic strips, when I saw that in the strip for January 16, 1950 there was a note in one of the panels: "Join the March of Dimes---Fight Infantile Paralysis".

I shuddered, and stopped reading. I thought about one of my school mates from the Arthur District High School who contracted Infantile Paralysis, later known simply as Polio. We had played hockey, marched in the school band and hung out together when suddenly, in I think 1953, he was rushed to the Hamilton General Hospital. We heard that he was in an iron lung to help him breathe but it wasn't clear whether he would survive.

Then while we waited for news on his condition, another of our high school students became ill with symptoms resembling those of polio. He was also taken to Hamilton General but his spinal tests were clear. He didn't have polio.

Everyone was grateful for that news but still worried about the first boy. Finally the news came that our friend would survive but that he would be in an iron lung for months.

My friends and I took up a collection to buy him a gift. Our first thought was a super pair of hockey pants with lots of padding. We all wore hand-me-down hockey gear in our village and we thought he would appreciate having a brand new pair of pants. We also thought, naively, that the gift might somehow motivate him to get back on his feet again.

Our parents pointed out, gently, that he would never play hockey again.

We bought, instead, a fancy five-year diary in red, tooled leather, not thinking that he might consider this as an indication that we believed he was going to be an invalid for a long time.

It was tough trying to find a suitable gift!

I remember going to see him at the Hamilton General a few times. He was lying on his back with his head and neck resting outside the iron lung but with the rest of his body inside the machine.

There was a rushing sound as air was pumped into and out of the machine, allowing him to breathe. I remember thinking about how carefully the nurses had combed his hair. Through the windows on the iron lung we could see his body and his arms and legs. He had lost considerable weight.

This is a Tank respirator ("iron lung") used at Union Hospital, Terre Haute, Indiana, from 1953 - c. 1973. Indiana State Museum, 650 West Washington Street, Indianapolis, Indiana, USA. By the time I was able to visit my friend, the medical staff had been able to remove the plastic bubble so that his head and neck were outside the iron lung.

The visits were relatively brief because he tired quickly and because, frankly, I found it hard to think of things to talk about. I remember censoring myself, not wanting to say anything about school, hockey games and other activities that he could no longer take part in, things that would just depress him.

He was finally released from hospital, in a wheelchair, and began rehabilitation.

Although he has spent the rest of his life in a wheelchair, he managed to attend law school at the University of Western Ontario. He was called to the bar in 1965 and has practiced law in Arthur every since.

Thanks to excellent medical care, the support of his family and friends, and an awesome inner toughness he has managed to live an almost normal life.

The 1950s were a terrible time for parents with a constant worry about polio. The ways in which the disease spread were not known, and about all the medical authorities could advise was that parents should keep their children from swimming pools, and fairs---such as the Canadian National Exhibition---especially during the hottest months of the years.

Here is a quote from the Wikipedia article on Dr. Salk that captures very well, I think, the terror that parents felt at that time.

"According to American historian William O'Neill, 'Paralytic poliomyelitis (its formal name) was, if not the most serious, easily the most frightening public health problem of the postwar era.' He noted that the epidemics kept getting worse and its victims were usually children. By 1952 it was killing more of them than any other communicable disease. In the twenty states that reported the disease back in 1916, there were 27,363 cases. New York alone had 9,023 cases of which 2,448 (28%) resulted in death, and a larger number in paralysis. However, polio did not gain national attention until 1921, when Franklin D. Roosevelt, former vice presidential candidate and soon to be governor of New York, came down with a paralytic illness, at the time diagnosed as polio. At the age of 39, Roosevelt was left with severe paralysis and spent most of his presidency in a wheelchair.
"Subsequently, as more states began recording instances of the disease, the numbers of victims grew larger. Nearly 58,000 cases of polio were reported in 1952, with 3,145 people dying and 21,269 left with mild to disabling paralysis. In some parts of the country, concern assumed almost the dimensions of panic. According to Olson, 'parents kept children home from school, avoided parks and swimming pools, and played only in small groups with the closest of friends.' Cases usually increased during the summer when children were home from school. 'The public reaction was to a plague', noted O'Neill. 'Citizens of urban areas were to be terrified every summer when this frightful visitor returned.' As a result, Olson points out, 'scientists were in a frantic race to find a cure.'

And then in 1955, just a couple of years after my friend contracted polio, Dr. Jonas Salk announced that field tests on a polio vaccine he had developed were successful. The vaccine was effective and safe.

Government grants, gifts from private donors and the contributions to the March of Dimes (of the kind Pogo had recommended) had worked.

Polio had been beaten.

By 1962, polio had been virtually eliminated in the US, Canada and Europe, and polio cases are becoming increasingly rare in the rest of the world.

The struggle for a vaccine had not been easy. Salk had worked for years in his lab, seven days a week, 17 or 18 hours a day to perfect the vaccine.

When someone asked whether he was going to patent his discovery, he shook his head and said, "Can you patent the sun?"

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As you know, this blog is dedicated to the view that the universe is made of stories, not atoms.

Here are a few stories about  Dr. Salk.

When he was a medical student and courting, the father of his future wife---a wealthy Manhattan dentist, very conscious of his elevated place in society--- refused to let the young couple get married until two conditions had been met. First, Salk had to get his MD so that the wedding invitation could show his title. Second, he had to give himself a middle name. Apparently, his parents had given him just the one name, Jonas. The future father-in-law thought that a single name was 'lower class'. Jonas chose 'Edward'.

He had little interest in money. " That (money) belongs in the category of mink coats and Cadillacs—unnecessary", he said.

He was troubled by the 'celebrity' that followed his discovery. (When he was flying,  pilots liked to announce that, "Dr. Salk is on board", and this was always followed by cheering and applause from the passengers.) He was forced into public events that kept him from his lab where he was working on a possible vaccine for cancer.

The Salks had three children: Peter, Darrell, and Jonathan Salk. In 1968, they divorced, and in 1970 Salk married Françoise Gilot, the French painter, who had lived with Pablo Picasso for nine years and had two children with him.

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Dr. Salk received many tributes during his life. Here is one that I find especially appropriate and moving. In 1977, Dr. Salk was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Jimmy Carter, with the following statement accompanying the medal:

"Because of Doctor Jonas E. Salk, our country is free from the cruel epidemics of poliomyelitis that once struck almost yearly. Because of his tireless work, untold hundreds of thousands who might have been crippled are sound in body today. These are Doctor Salk's true honors, and there is no way to add to them. This Medal of Freedom can only express our gratitude, and our deepest thanks."

Dr. Salk died in 1995, of heart failure, at the age of 80.


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See you on April 22, 2012 for Posting #143 with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting,  or email me at johnpathunter@gmail.com.

Note:
There is a new Posting (# 8) in The Icewine Guru blog. In it the Guru gives his prediction on the Supreme Court's decision on the health care mandate issue. He and the Professor and their wives then discuss religion and politics. If you would like to read the Posting, please click on  http://theicewineguru.blogspot.com/