The History of Poliomyelitis Better Known as Polio

Polio an American story is a scholarly readable and informative book which covers the lives of many American eminent scientists who struggled a lot to eradicate polio. This book mainly focuses on the mid twentieth century where the people are very eager to find a vaccine to eradicate polio .This book also covers the entire topics from appearance of polio symptoms to post polio syndrome which shows the valuable thesis done by David M. Oshinsky.

With the last outbreak of Polio in the US being in 1979, many today have no recollection of the terror of this disease. The disease primarily infected children, and there seemed to be no pattern to who succumbed to it. No one could feel safe. Polio as a disease presents such horrors that even those who overcome it once can be plagued by its aftereffects in later life. Before vaccines, single outbreaks could devastate entire communities. One outbreak

Polio, something that can devastate anyone and everyone so very quickly. In 1953, you didn’t know when you could be infected with this life threatening disease.

Poliomyelitis (polio) is a disease that attacks the nervous tissue in the spinal cord and the brain stem resulting in paralysis (Document One). Polio is caused by the poliovirus, but it is unknown how this virus is acquired. The virus enters the digestive tract and stays in the intestines for up to eight weeks, and then attacks the lymphatic system, the blood stream and eventually travels to the brain and spine (Document Four). Once it is infected in one’s body, the disease is highly contagious and can be spread through contact of saliva, food, germs, or feces (Document Two). “The poliovirus causes most of its infections in the summer and fall. At one time, summer epidemics of polio were common and greatly feared” (Document Four). This may

Almost 100 years later, the first polio outbreak was recorded in Vermont, with 132 cases. Another polio outbreak was recorded in 1916, but it was not just confined to one state this time, it was the whole U.S. that was affected. This would only be the start of an epidemic that wouldn't just affect the United States, but the

Poliomyelitis was a highly infectious disease that spread through many Americans in the early 20th century. As a matter of fact, over 3,000 Americans died of the disease each year. Families were overwhelmingly desperate for doctors to find a cure. When one suffered from polio, they generally experienced painful symptoms which included not only fatigue and muscle weakness, but even death. Therefore, when the polio vaccine was introduced by scientist Jonas Salk in 1953, it greatly contributed to Americans in numerous positive ways. Environmentally, the vaccine saved countless young American lives affected by the disease thus decreasing American mortality rates. Socially, the polio vaccine convenienced families who were either directly afflicted

Everyday, the United States faces new threats to public health and well being, and everyday, medicine advances. Updated medical procedures have created a safer, healthier nation than years past. Some of the most important advancements and ideas were created not that long ago. An era of extreme change of the medical world in the United States was the outbreak of poliomyelitis in the 1930s and 1940s. Three decades of research, treatment, and fighting an epidemic led doctors to take a different approach to medicine. This era produced new inventions, new sanitation concerns, and new vaccines. It also stressed the importance of maintaining personal health, and the importance of receiving all vaccines. These medical advancements include the invention

Polio reached the height of its pandemic proportions in the first half of the nineteenth century.[2] The creation of the first safe and effective poliovirus vaccine by Dr. Jonas Salk in 1955 made immediate and profound impacts in the incidence of disease. For example, in the United States two years prior to the development of the vaccine, the average number of polio cases was greater than 45,000. In 1962, just seven years after the advent of vaccination, that number diminished to 910.[2] The effectiveness of the vaccine soon prompted health officials to extend the application of immunization worldwide. In 1988, the World Health Assembly resolved to eradicate poliomyelitis by the year 2000 and by 1999, global incidence of the disease dropped by approximately

Polio is an infectious disease that has killed and paralyzed many people (Birth of Jonas Salk and the death of polio in India). It has taken the lives of

disease occurred in only United States and 42,173 cases were come to the surface in Canada and the United Kingdom.(6,7) Prior to the 20th century polio infections were rarely seen in infants before the age of 6 months and majority of cases occurred in children 6 months to 4 years of age.(8) In developed countries during the late 19th and early 20th century, improvements were observed made in community sanitation, including improved sewage disposal and focus on clean water supplies. In United States, the 1952 polio epidemic was the worst outbreak in the nation's history, and it increased heightening of parents’ fears about the disease and also created public awareness on the need for a vaccine. During evolution of treatment history, in

Poliomyelitis (polio) is an infectious disease caused by the polio virus and is spread from person to person through faecal-oral transmission which means; stool entering the mouth or consumption of food containing stool from an infection person. The poliovirus resides in the intestinal tract and mucus in the nose and throat. Contact with infected respiratory secretions or even saliva can cause poliovirus transmission. This mode of transmission is known as oral-oral transmission. Polio became prevalent in the United States of America (U.S) in the 1940s and 1950s.this was followed by outbreaks of the disease that crippled tens of thousands in North America. Polio eradication is aimed at reducing the global incidence of polio to zero through deliberate efforts to a point that it requires no further control. Polio eradication is to be achieved through interruption of endemic transmission of poliovirus through vaccination. This saw the wide use of the inactivated polio virus (IPV) that was administered orally (OPV); oral polio vaccine.

The word poliomyelitis is derived from two Greek words, polio meaning grey and myelon meaning marrow which indicates the spinal cord. The classic manifestation of paralysis is the effect of polio virus on the spine (Paul, 1971). Ancient records mention crippling diseases compatible with poliomyelitis. A weakness of the lower limbs in children that was identifiable as poliomyelitis was first described by Michael Underwood in 1789. The first outbreaks were reported in the early 19th century and in 1843 in Europe and the United States respectively. For the next century, polio epidemics were reported from developed countries in the Northern Hemisphere each summer and fall. As years passed, the severity of the epidemics and the average age of persons affected increased (Birmingham et al.,1997). This led to an increase in the number of deaths as a resulting from polio. Polio cases hit a peak in the USA in 1952, where more than 21,000 paralytic cases were reported (Paul, 1971). However, polio incidence declined rapidly following introduction of

The poliovirus is one of the most transmittable and most contagious viruses that the human population has come in contact with.  The structure of the poliovirus allows it to be able to bind to motor neuron cells within a host’s body and reproduce quickly. Like all virus’s, the poliovirus

The virus usually enters the environment in the feces of someone who is infected. In areas with poor sanitation, the virus easily spreads through the fecal-oral route, via contaminated water or food. A lot of the polio epidemics were unknown before the 20th century. Paralytic polio Epidemics began to appear in Europe and the United States around 1900. First report of multiple polio cases was published in 1843 and described an 1841 outbreak in Louisiana. There is a gap of fifty years before the next epidemic later polio began to make itself noticeable by having, 26 cases in Boston in 1823, 132 cases with 18 deaths in Vermont, approximately 2,500 cases in New York City. On Saturday, June 17, 1916 an official announcement of the existence of an epidemic polio infection was made in New York. On this year there were only 27,000 cases, 6,000 deaths in the U.S, and over 2,000 deaths in New York alone. Thanks to Jonas Salk on July 2, 1952 he first introduced his “killed virus” he belived that this was going to end polio so he told people that he was going to test it on his wife and children. According to Dr. Thomas Francis The vaccine on April 12, 1955 he declared the vaccine safe and effective. The vaccines had proven to be 80 to 90% effective on the basis of results in 11 states. Overall, the vaccine was administered to over 440,000 children in 44

The discovery of the polio vaccine was an important medical and scientific breakthrough because it saved many lives since the 1950s. In the summer of 1916 the great polio epidemic struck the United states. By the 1950s hundreds of thousands of people had been struck by the poliomyelitis. The highest number of cases occurred in 1953 with over 50,000 people infected with the virus.