Anyone of my generation in Greenville will remember a nationwide - TopicsExpress



          

Anyone of my generation in Greenville will remember a nationwide epidemic of polio cases in 1952. There were 60,000 cases with about 3,000 deaths that year. Children were kept at home and movie theaters and other gathering places were closed that summer. A teenaged girl on W Stone Ave, whose name escapes me, died. A close friend in school wore long sleeved shirts all his life to hide a withered arm, and several boys at my high school walked with leg braces or crutches. Polio has existed from ancient times. The emperor Claudius and Sir Walter Scott are thought to have had the disease; FDR fought a war from a wheel chair. Fortunately Dr. Salk developed an effective vaccine in 1955 and Sabin perfected an oral vaccine in 1956. It has been basically eliminated in developed countries and young people today do not have to know what it was like.
Posted on: Wed, 19 Nov 2014 17:14:23 +0000

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