Polio was a deadly disease that struck the United States hard with various epidemic breakouts throughout the country. There are many books written about the disease and how it was controlled. Polio is a well-researched topic in today’s medical world but in this book, Heather Green Wooten, takes it one step further. She placed the focus of the book in the south, a place where the disease struck almost last yet it claimed many lives. It specifies on the state of Texas. In addition to that, she combined
Hitler, and they were afraid of polio. A disease as indiscriminate as a nuclear bomb, it struck young and old, rich and poor, white and black. It caused fear and hysteria, confusion and anger, paralysis, and even death. By this time the United States had endured smallpox, cholera, yellow fever, and tuberculosis; but it had never experienced a wide-spread epidemic of a disease that seemed to specifically target children before the twentieth century. Although polio effects people of all ages
millions of children from 1920-1950. Most of the Polio epidemics had happen during the summer. The first cause of Polio in the United States happen in Brooklyn, New York in 1916 when according to Heaven Emerson the public health commissioner said “90 italian immigrants under the age of 10 had moved to Brooklyn where the outbreak appeared, and that immigrants were the first to get it because they were dirtier and poorer.” From that summer in 1916, Polio had scared the entire population in New York
Eradication of disease through the simple administration of a shot seems like the perfect solution to a complicated problem. Right? The presence of the polio virus had been a growing cause of hysteria throughout the course of history. With cases documented back into the 1700’s, the thought of polio, a virus that causes extensive paralysis, wrecked havoc on the minds of every mother and father in the world. This fear grew as the spread of the virus continued to span the globe. Parents everywhere from
The disease poliomyelitis is more commonly known by its alternative name “polio.” The history of this disease dates back into prehistory, but major polio epidemics were not known before the twentieth century. The first clinical description of this disease was provided by a British physician named Michael Underwood, in which he described the disease as debility of the lower extremities. In the 1880s major epidemics started to occur in Europe, then made its way soon after into the United States. The
Polio is an infectious disease caused by a special types of viruses. The United States Of America is still at risk of introducing polio. A polio like illness has recently been discovered in California in children that produces paralysis like in some polio patients. The last case of polio in The United States Of America was in 1979. Polio is still a very high problem in Africa and Asia. Polio has also been traced back almost 6,000 years ago. Polio is caused by small viruses, RNA viruses to be exact
INTRODUCTION Polio is caused by a virus and it used to be a common cause of Encephalitis. Polio was once considered a middle class, because good hygiene could delay exposure of a person to the virus until late childhood, the adolescent years or adulthood, when infection would produce most severe symptoms. Infections in early childhood generally results in asymptomatic or very mild disease. In the great 1916 polio endemic in New York City, 9,000 cases of paralysis were reported and nearly all in children
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
Polio Virus Introduction The polio virus which causes poliomyelitis in humans is an enterovirus which belongs to the picornavirus (small, RNA) family. Polio virus is rapid, acid-resistant, stable, highly tissue specific and consists of a single-stranded, positive RNA. Polio virus is able to reside in the throat or intestinal tract of humans. Poliomyelitis is a highly contagious infectious disease which has three strains, poliovirus 1 (PV1), PV2 and PV3. Polio virus, although rare in developed
words). Polio, or poliomyelitis, is an infectious disease that manifests as a variety of symptoms, the most severe of which is paralysis which can lead to permanent disability and death. Some people show no symptoms at all. Children who recover from polio at a young age may develop new symptoms later in life (“CDC Global Health - Polio - What Is Polio?,” n.d.). Polio was considered a disease of developed countries for much of the 1900s. However, in the 1960s and 1970s, prevalence of polio in schoolchildren