Polio and Post-Polio Syndrome

In 1895, Gould's Medical Dictionary defined poliomyelitis as follows:

This definition has barely changed over the last century.

In 1916, New York City experienced the first large epidemic of polio, with over 9,000 cases and 2,343 deaths. The 1916 toll nationwide was 27,000 cases and 6,000 deaths. Epidemics worsened during the century: In 1952, a record 57,628 cases of polio were reported in the United States.

Polio (also called infantile paralysis) is most often associated with children, but at its peak, it affected teens and grown-ups as well (although far fewer in number). Between 1949 and 1954, 35 percent of those who contracted polio were adults.

The first known polio outbreak in the United States was reported from the State of Vermont, in 1894, and is documented by Dr. C. S. Caverly, secretary of the State Board of Health in that year: “Early in the summer just passed, physicians in certain parts of Rutland County, Vermont, noticed that an acute nervous disease which was almost invariably attended with some paralysis, was epidemic … and a general feeling of uneasiness … was perceptible among the people in regard to the ‘new disease’ that was affecting the children.” The last cases of wild (naturally occurring) polio in the United States were in 1979 in four states, among Amish residents who had refused vaccination.

Throughout most of the 20th century, hospitals operated under strict and orderly patient regimens. Epidemic conditions, combined with the lack of a cure for polio, heightened everyone's anxiety. During a 1934 epidemic in Los Angeles, 5 percent of doctors and 11 percent of nurses who treated polio patients contracted the disease.

Some historical highlights in the history of polio are as follows:

• 1789—Dr. Michael Underwood, a British physician, provides first clinical description of the disease
• 1894—First outbreak of epidemic polio in the United States occurs in Vermont, with 132 cases
• 1921—Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) contracts polio. He is 39 years old. He is elected as president of the United States in 1933
• 1938—FDR founds the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, currently known as the March of Dimes
• 1940s—A nurse from Australia, Sister Kenny, starts to promote her polio treatment/rehab in the United States
• 1953—Dr. Jonas Salk and his associates at the University of Pittsburgh develop an inactivated injected polio vaccine
• 1962—The Salk vaccine is replaced by the Sabin vaccine, an orally administered live vaccine
• 1979—The last case of wild-type polio in the United States
• 1980s—Post-polio syndrome (PPS) identified
• 1988—Rotary International, Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), World Health Organization (WHO), U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) start the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI)
• 1999—The United States returns to Salk's inactivated polio vaccine