Abstract
One summer day in 1947, ten-year-old Mary Ann Hoffman, growing up in rural North Dakota, complained to her parents that she did not feel well:
I had been out to the barn, roller skating up in the hay loft … [M]y muscles ached. I had a terrible headache and a temperature, so my mother told me to lie down … Sometime that week, our family doctor came out to the house to examine me. He thought that I had rheumatic fever. I also remember that he looked in my throat and said, “Those tonsils need to come out. As soon as you get over this, we’ll put you in the hospital and take them out.” Well, I’ve still got those tonsils. They were all right, but I wasn’t!1
I didn’t know what they were going to do.
I didn’t know what they were going to feed us,
or what they were going to let us do—stand or sit,
or let us see our mothers…
—An eleven-year-old boy
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Notes and Sources
Hoffman in Edmund J. Sass, with George Gottfried and Anthony Sorem, Polio’s Legacy: An Oral History (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1996): 134. Refer as well to p. 138.
Sass, Gottfried, and Sorem, Polio’s Legacy: 30; George Draper, Acute Poliomyelitis (Philadelphia: P. Blakiston’s Son & Co., 1927): 62–63.
Gurney in Sass, Gottfried, and Sorem, Polio’s Legacy: 22; Davis’s narrative is part of a collection in Thomas M. Daniel and Frederick C. Robbins (eds.), Polio (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 1997): 31.
See also Philip Lewin, Infantile Paralysis: Anterior Poliomyelitis (Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders Co., 1941): 118;
Mia Farrow, What Falls Away: A Memoir (New York: Nan A. Talese, 1997): 1;
Alice Sink, The Grit Behind the Miracle: A True Story of the Determination and Hard Work Behind an Emergency Infantile Paralysis Hospital, 1944–1945, Hickory, North Carolina (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1998): 41.
Liza Dawson, “The Salk Polio Vaccine Trial of 1954: Risks, Randomization and Public Involvement,” Clinical Trials 1 (2004): 122–30. The nurse is quoted on p. 123. See also Michael W. R. Davis’s recollections in Daniel and Robbins, Polio: 30–31; Sink, The Grit Behind the Miracle: 41.
Eiben in Daniel and Robbins, Polio: 97. Also refer to p. 99, as well as to comments by Dr. Martha Lipson Lepow in Daniel and Robbins, Polio: 140. See also Helen McNellis and Jerry McNellis, “Don’t Pick Him Up”: Our Family’s Experience with Polio (Beaver Falls, PA: BrainTrain Press, 2011): 65.
Charles E. Rosenberg, The Care of Strangers: The Rise of America’s Hospital System (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987): 292.
Finger, Elegy for A Disease: 55. Some very young children have no memory of being hospitalized. For example, Ron Zemke, who contracted polio at 17 months of age in 1945, has no recollection whatsoever of the three years he spent in acute and convalescent care, because of the physical and emotional trauma. See Diane Zemke, Polio: A Special Ride? (Minnetonka, MN: Diagnostic Center of Learning Patterns, Inc., 1997): 8, 10, 18.
Lynne M. Dunphy, “‘The Steel Cocoon:’ Tales of the Nurses and Patients of the Iron Lung, 1929-–5,” Nursing History Review, 9 (2001): 16.
Refer also to William S. Langford, “Physical Illness and Convalescence: Their Meaning to the Child,” Journal of Pediatrics 33 (1948): 247–48;
Marc Shell, Polio and Its Aftermath: The Paralysis of Culture (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005): 68–69.
Rita Charon, Narrative Medicine: Honoring the Stories of Illness (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006): 14 and 21, respectively. Consult p. 17 as well.
Dunphy, “The Steel Cocoon’”: 14. See also Charles L. Mee, A Nearly Normal Life (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1999): 26; Finger, Elegy for a Disease: 57.
This boy’s quote appears in Fred Davis, Passage through Crisis: Polio Victims and Their Families (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1963): 52.
Boyer in Nina Gilden Seavey, Jane S. Smith, and Paul Wagner, A Paralyzing Fear: The Triumph Over Polio in America (New York: TV Books, 1998): 77–78. Refer also to p., 126. See also Davis, Passage through Crisis: 69; and the recollections of Gail Bias in Sass, Gottfried, and Sorem, Polio’s Legacy: 78.
Gareth Williams, Paralyzed with Fear: The Story of Polio (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013): 141.
Jeffrey Kluger, Splendid Solution: Jonas Salk and the Conquest of Polio (New York: G. P. Putnam’s, 2004): 155–56.
Hoffman in Sass, Gottfried, and Sorem, Polio’s Legacy: 135–37. See also Henry O. Kendall and Florence P. Kendall, Care during the Recovery Period in Paralytic Poliomyelitis, U.S. Public Health Service. Bulletin No. 242 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1939): 1; Lewin, Infantile Paralysis: 118–19;
Dr. Alice Turek’s narrative in Janice Flood Nichols, Twin Voices: A Memoir of Polio, the Forgotten Killer (Bloomington, IN: iUniverse, Inc., 2007): 40.
Robert W. Lovett, The Treatment of Infantile Paralysis (Philadelphia: P. Blakiston’s Son & Co., 1917): 12.
Hugh Gregory Gallagher, Black Bird Fly Away: Disabled in an Able-Bodied World (Arlington, VA: Vandamere Press, 1998): 22–24.
Peg Kehret, Small Steps: The Year I Got Polio (Morton Grove, IL: 1996): 18, 20, 22.
For the nurse’s perspective, see Carmelita Calderwood, “Nursing Care in Poliomyelitis: Orthopedic Nursing Care of Patients in the Acute Stage of Poliomyelitis,” American Journal of Nursing 40 (June 1940): 630. Consult p. 628 for her directions on how to turn a bedridden polio patient.
Leonard Kriegel, Falling into Life (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1991): 152.
Brenda Serotte, in The Fortune Teller’s Kiss (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006), refers to this experience in similar terms: a “way station between life and death” (83).
Tracie C. Harrison and Alexa Stuifbergen, “A Hermeneutic Phenomenological Analysis of Aging with a Childhood Onset Disability,” Health Care for Women International 26 (September 2005): 736.
Gallagher, Black Bird Fly Away: 38. He describes this desperate struggle earlier (p. 33) in existential terms. See as well Leonard Kriegel, The Long Walk Home: An Adventure in Survival (New York: Appleton-Century, 1964): 12–13; Mee, A Nearly Normal Life: 21; Flood Nichols, Twin Voices: 52, 56, 62, and 65;
Russell Viner and Janet Goldman, “Children’s Experiences of Illness,” in Roger Cooter and John Pickstone (eds.), Medicine in the Twentieth Century (Australia: Harwood Academic Publishers, 2000): 576.
Samuel H. Preston and Michael R. Haines, Fatal Years: Child Mortality in Late Nineteenth-Century America (Princeton: University of Princeton Press, 1991): 30.
Viviana A. Zelizer, Pricing the Priceless Child: The Changing Social Value of Children (New York: Basic Books, 1985): 23.
See also Philippe Ariés, The Hour of Our Death: The Classic History of Western Attitudes Toward Death Over the Last One Thousand Years, translated by Helen Weaver (New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1981): 447.
Heather Green Wooten, The Polio Years in Texas: Battling a Terrifying Unknown (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2009): 82–83. Also refer to Rosenberg, The Care of Strangers: 40.
Edith Powell and John F. Hume, A Black Oasis: Tuskegee Institute’s Fight Against Infantile Paralysis, 1941–1975 (copyright, 2008): 29; Sink, The Grit Behind the Miracle: 73–75.
The information in these paragraphs is from Stephen E. Mawdsley, “Polio and Prejudice: Charles Hudson Bynum and the Racial Politics of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, 1938–1954” (MA thesis, University of Alberta, 2008): 17 and 16, respectively. See as well pp. 13 and 15.
Refer also to Vanessa Northington Gamble, Making a Place for Ourselves: The Black Hospital Movement, 1920–1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995): 44; “Medical News,” Journal of the American Medical Association 113 (July 1939): 340; McNellis and McNellis, “Don’t Pick Him Up”: 33–34; Powell and Hume. A Black Oasis: 101.
Dunphy, “Steel Cocoon’”: 6. Consult also Calderwood, “Nursing Care in Poliomyelitis”: 624; Kehret, Small Steps: 41–43; Jason Chu Lee, “Poliomyelitis in the Lone Star State: A Brief Examination in Rural and Urban Communities” (MA thesis, Texas State University-San Marcos, 2005): 62; Mary Grimley Mason, Life Prints: A Memoir of Healing and Discovery (New York: Feminist Press, 2000): 6; Mee, A Nearly Normal Life: 14, 15–16, 24, 28, and 29.
Tisdale is quoted on p. 6 and the Minnesota physician on p. 21 in Dunphy, “Steel Cocoon.” Refer as well to pp. 6, 18, 20, and 22. See also Alice A. Grant, “Medical Social Work in an Epidemic of Poliomyelitis,” Journal of Pediatrics 24 (June 1944): 696.
Earl C. Elkins and K. G. Wakim, “The Present Concept of Treatment of Poliomyelitis,” Journal of the Iowa State Medical Society 37 (August 1947): 358.
David J. Rothman, “The Iron Lung and Democratic Medicine,” in David J. Rothman (ed.), Beginnings Count: The Technological Imperative in American Health Care (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997): 45. Consult p. 46 as well. See also Mee, A Nearly Normal Life: 75.
Dunphy, “The Steel Cocoon’”: 6; Eiben in Daniel and Robbins, Polio: 106; James H. Maxwell, “The Iron Lung: Halfway Technology or Necessary Step?” Milbank Quarterly 64 (1986): 10–11; Paul, History of Poliomyelitis: 331; Roth-man, “The Iron Lung and Democratic Medicine”: 45–46 and 48.
John E. Affeldt, “Recent Advances in the Treatment of Poliomyelitis.” Journal of the American Medical Association 156 (September 1954): 12; Bruno, The Polio Paradox: 63; Eiben in Daniel and Robbins, Polio: 106.
Regina Woods, Tales from Inside the Iron Lung (and How I Got Out of It), with a forward by David E. Rogers, MD (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994): 6. Lynne M. Dunphy also uses this term on p. 13 in “‘The Steel Cocoon’: Tales of the Nurses and Patients of the Iron Lung, 1929–55” (Nursing History Review 9, 2001). See also Lewin, Infantile Paralysis: 130 and 134. The foremost guide, in booklet form, that covered every aspect of nursing care for polios was from the National Organization for Public Health Nursing (NOPHN) and the National League of Nursing Education (NLNE), “Nursing for the Poliomyelitis Patient” (New York: NOPHN & NLNE, 1948): 45–47, 49, and 56.
See also Anon., “Landmark Perspective: The Iron Lung,” Journal of the American Medical Association 255 (March 1986): 1177; Maxwell, “The Iron Lung”: 7–9;
Naomi Rogers, Dirt and Disease: Polio Before FDR (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996): 176; Rothman, “The Iron Lung and Democratic Medicine”: 43.
Dunphy, “The Steel Cocoon”: 25; Gustav J. Beck, George C. Graham, and Alvan L. Barach, “Effect of Physical Methods on the Mechanics of Breathing in Poliomyelitis,” Annals of Internal Medicine 43 (September 1955): 551, 564.
Greenberg in Julie Silver and Daniel Wilson, Polio Voices: An Oral History from the American Polio Epidemics and Worldwide Eradication Efforts (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2007): 56; NOPHN & NLNE, “Nursing for the Poliomyelitis Patient,” 47–48, 50–53, 55–56, 58;
Louis Sternburg and Dorothy Sternburg, View from the Seesaw (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1986): 20.
Lawrence Alexander, as told to Adam Barnett, The Iron Cradle: My Fight Against Polio (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1954): 65–66; Lee, “Poliomyelitis in the Lone Star State”: 61; Juanita Howell in Seavey, Smith, and Wagner, A Paralyzing Fear: 26, 147, and 151; NOPHN & NLNE, “Nursing for the Poliomyelitis Patient:” 49.
Daniel J. Wilson, “Braces, Wheelchairs, and Iron Lungs: The Paralyzed Body and the Machinery of Rehabilitation in the Polio Epidemics,” Journal of Medical Humanities 26 (Fall 2005): 182.
Woods, Tales from Inside the Iron Lung: 125; Robert Baker, Before Bioethics: A History of American Medical Ethics from the Colonial Period to the Bioethics Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013): 59.
Alexander, The Iron Cradle: 62 and 119–20; Barker in Silver and Wilson, Polio Voices: 29; Seavey, Smith, and Wagner, A Paralyzing Fear: 140–41; Sternburg and Sternburg, View from the Seesaw: 39 and 46; John Troan, Passport to Adventure: Or, How a Typewriter from Santa Led to an Exciting Lifetime Journey (Pittsburgh, PA: Geyer Printing, 2000): 191–92; Woods, Tales from Inside the Iron Lung: 60; Jessie Wright Papers, 1925–1970, Record Group 7/1, box No. 2, folder No. 1–Medical Staff-newspaper clippings, 1946 and 1949, WIA.
J. N. Hays, The Burdens of Disease: Epidemics and Human Response in Western History (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1998): 265; Lewin, Infantile Paralysis: 327–28; Francis W. Peabody, George Draper, and A. A. Duchey, “A Clinical Study of Acute Poliomyelitis,” monograph of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, No. 4, 1912, reprint of Vol. 61 (New York: RIMR, 1913): 54, 57–58, 69; RAC Report of the Department of Health of the City of Chicago for the Years of 1911 to 1918 Inclusive (Chicago: Department of Health, 1919): 174 (CPL); Annual Report of the Board of Health of the City of Chicago for 1933 (Chicago: 1934): 38 (CPL).
Lewin, Infantile Paralysis: 165; Kendall and Kendall, Care during the Recovery Period in Paralytic Poliomyelitis: 8 and 10; John F. Landon and Lawrence W. Smith, Poliomyelitis: A Handbook for Physicians and Medical Students (New York: Macmillan Company, 1934): 218–220.
NOPHN and NLNE, “Nursing for the Poliomyelitis Patient”: 69–70; Gould, A Summer Plague: 93, 94–95, and 99; Lewin, Infantile Paralysis: 138, 157, and 191; Paul, History of Poliomyelitis: 338–40; Seavey, Smith, and Wagner, A Paralyzing Fear: 102–03; Sass, Gottfried, and Sorem, Polio’s Legacy: 21; Daniel J. Wilson, Living with Polio: The Epidemic and Its Survivors (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005): 52.
Paul, History of Poliomyelitis: 339–40; Turnley Walker, Roosevelt and the Warm Springs Story (New York: A. A. Wyn, Inc., 1953): 242, 244.
H. W. Frauenthal, “The Treatment of Infantile Paralysis Based on the Present Epidemic,” Journal of Electrotherapeutics and Radiology 34 (October 1916): 507. He vehemently opposed plaster casting based on his experiences treating patients during the 1916 epidemic, arguing that atrophy and poor casting, which appeared common, hindered paralysis recovery.
Susan Richards Shreve, Warm Springs: Traces of a Childhood at FDR’s Polio Haven (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2007): 62–63.
Janet Golden and Naomi Rogers, “Nurse Irene Shea Studies the ‘Kenny Method’ of Treatment of Infantile Paralysis, 1942–1943,” Nursing History Review 18 (2010): 191. See also “Kenny Paralysis Treatment Approved by U.S. Medicine,” New York Times, December 5, 1941, 1 and 26;
Victor Cohn, Sister Kenny: The Woman Who Challenged the Doctors (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1976): 69–70;
Naomi Rogers, Polio Wars: Sister Kenny and the Golden Age of American Medicine (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014): x, 3.
Cohn, Sister Kenny: 97; see also pp. 4, 87–94, 99–100, 107, and 119–20. See also Elizabeth Kenny Papers, MHS; Elizabeth Kenny, The Treatment of Infantile Paralysis in the Acute Stage (Minneapolis: Bruce Publishing Co., 1941): xiv;
Elizabeth Kenny, My Battle and Victory (London: Robert Hale, Ltd., 1955): 15–16; Finger, Elegy for A Disease: 93–96; Gould, A Summer Plague, 86–89; Paul, History of Poliomyelitis: 339–41; Rogers, Polio Wars: 5–6 and 9–11; Sass, Gottfried, and Sorem, Polio’s Legacy: 9.
Kenny, My Battle and Victory: 18–19; see p. 16 as well. See also Cohn, Sister Kenny: 126–28 and 161; Victor Cohn, Four Billion Dimes (Minneapolis, MN: Minneapolis Star and Tribune, 1955): 61, 65; Gould, A Summer Plague: 95–96;
Steven E. Koop, We Hold this Treasure: The Story of Gillette Children’s Hospital (Afton, MN: Afton Historical Society Press, 1998): 93; Rogers, Polio Wars: 16–17; Sass, Gottfried, and Sorem, Polio’s Legacy: 9–10.
Rogers, Polio Wars: 22–23 and 90, respectively; see also pp. 92 and 153. See also Wallace H. Cole, John F. Pohl, and Miland E. Knapp, The Kenny Method of Treatment for Infantile Paralysis (New York: NFIP, 1942).
Peg Kehret, Small Steps: The Year I Got Polio (Morton Grove, IL: 1996): 52–53.
Naomi Rogers, “American Medicine and the Politics of Filmmaking: Sister Kenny,” in Leslie J. Reagan, Nancy Tomes, and Paula A. Treichler (eds.), Medicine’s Moving Pictures: Medicine, Health, and Bodies in American Film and Television (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2007): 202, 214, and 218, respectively; also consult p. 206. See also MOD, Approved Grants, 1943, series 8: Grants and Appropriations, Medical Records Programs. Bruno, in Polio Paradox, uses the term “Kenny Technicians” on p. 72. See also Cohn, Sister Kenny: 157 and 170; Golden and Rogers, “Nurse Irene Shea:” 190 and 192; Gould, A Summer Plague: 110; Kenny, My Battle and Victory: 26, 27–28, and 30; Koop, We Hold This Treasure: 95; Rogers, Polio Wars: xv and 99;
Heather Green Wooten, The Polio Years in Texas: Battling a Terrifying Unknown (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2009): 60–61; “Kenny Paralysis Treatment Approved by U.S. Medicine,” New York Times, December 5, 1941, 1 and 26; George Draper, “No Specific Cure,” New York Times, April 12, 1942, Section E: 9; “Miss Kenny’s Paralysis Theory Verified by Tests, Doctors Say,” New York Times, July 17 1942: 17.
“Crosby Names Chairman for Paralysis Fund,” New York Herald Tribune, Oct. 14, 1945, folder 118, “Medical Interests—Sister Kenny Foundation, 1944– 60,” box 15, RG 2, Medical Interests series, Office of the Messrs. Rockefeller (OMR), Rockefeller Family Archives, RAC. See also Cohn, Sister Kenny: 146, 169–70, and 201–04; Golden and Rogers, “Nurse Irene Shea”: 192, 204, 208, 216, and 224; Paul, History of Poliomyelitis: 340; John F. Pohl, in collaboration with Sister Elizabeth Kenny, The Kenny Concept of Infantile Paralysis and Its Treatment (Minneapolis: Bruce Publishing Co., 1943). For a contemporary review of this book, refer to M. F. Ashley Montagu’s article in the Book Review section of The New York Times, July 18, 1943. Consult also “RKO Acquires Right to Make Life of Sister Elizabeth Kenny, Australian Nurse,” New York Times, September 5, 1942, p. 9; “Rochester Degree for Sister Kenny,” New York Times (Amusements section), May 3, 1943: 12; “N.Y.U. Class of 3,607 Is to Be Graduated,” New York Times, June 9, 1943: 10; Rogers, Polio Wars: 106 and 375.
Owen in Sass, Gottfried, and Sorem, Polio’s Legacy: 30; also see p. 34; See also Susan Richard Shreve, Warm Springs: Traces of a Childhood at FDR’s Polio Haven (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2007): 39–43; “Girl Walks Again in Kenny Cure Test,” New York Times, October 27, 1942: 30; “Paralysis Victim Cured,” New York Times, November 24, 1942: 21.
McCarroll is quoted in Maurice L. Laurence, “Hits Kenny Method in Poliomyelitis” (New York Times, October 31, 1942: 9.
Marilyn Moffat, “The History of Physical Therapy Practice in the United States,” Journal of Physical Therapy Education 17 (Winter 2003): 17. See also Golden and Rogers, “Nurse Irene Shea”: 202; Gould, A Summer Plague: 103.
Cohn, Sister Kenny: 208; also consult pp. 206 and 234. See also Cohn, Four Billion Dimes: 95–97; Aaron E. Klein, Trial by Fury: The Polio Vaccine Controversy (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1972): 69; News Release from the Second International Poliomyelitis Conference of the International Poliomyelitis Congress, 8/28/51, and News Release from the Second International Poliomyelitis Conference of the International Poliomyelitis Congress, 9/5/51 (Copenhagen), box 7, file folder, International Poliomyelitis Congress (Collection # 90/36/7), Jonas Salk Papers (UPITT); “Kenny Fund Tells of Growth Needs,” New York Times, September 15, 1949: 30; “Sister Kenny Here,” New York Times, August 23, 1951: 1; “Sister Kenny Arrives Here,” New York Times, September 11, 1951: 19.
L. McCarty Fairchild, “Some Psychological Factors Observed in Poliomyelitis Patients,” American Journal of Physical Medicine 31 (1952): 277, 278, and 279, respectively.
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© 2015 Richard J. Altenbaugh
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Altenbaugh, R.J. (2015). Many Yellow Caskets. In: The Last Children’s Plague. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137527851_2
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