Abstract
The New York Times boldly announced the commencement of the “anti-paralysis war” on July 11, 1916. Until that point, hospitals simply released their charges—no plan existed for subsequent treatment. The New York City epidemic, however, had introduced an unprecedented scale of sudden disability among young children that immediately overwhelmed public agencies as well as private ones. Aftercare in general did not seem important prior to 1916. Only prompt medical procedures or therapy prevented these children, the Times further reported, from “being crippled for life.” The challenges of polio aftercare had rudely awakened American society. The initial response was scattered and loosely coordinated. In the decades to come, philanthropic and organizational responses to physical disability reached a magnitude unmatched in American history. Following initial diagnosis and quarantine, physicians sent many children to convalescent departments within hospitals or separate institutions, where they faced a rigorous regimen of physical activity or additional medical remedies. Others were sent home, where their mothers supervised their convalescence.1
Oh Lord: Restore me to that state of mind and body in which I was, when you created me.
—Polio child’s prayer
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes and Sources
Amy L. Fairchild, Ronald Bayer, and James Colgrove, Searching Eyes: Privacy, the State, and Disease Surveillance in America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007): 144–45. Consult pp. 51–53 and 54 as well.
These four quotes can be found, in order, in the following sources: “New York Schools May Open Sept. 25,” New York Times, August 17, 1916: 6; “To Sustain the Brace Fund,” New York Times, August 10, 1916: 8; “Emerson Defends Opening of School,” New York Times, October 1, 1916 (Section 1): 19; “Paralysis Figures Rise in Manhattan,” New York Times, July 26, 1916: 5. Consult also “Day Shows Drop in Infantile Paralysis,” New York Times, July 21, 1916: 18; “See Paralysis Curb in Cooler Weather,” New York Times, August 12, 1916: 16; Cynthia A. Connolly, Saving Sickly Children: The Tuberculosis Preventorium in American Life, 1909–1970 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2008): 31–33.
Rockefeller Foundation Minutes, “After Care of Infantile Paralysis Cases, New York Committee on After Care of Infantile Paralysis Cases,” October 10, 1916, p. 4096; Foundation Minutes, “State Charities Aid Association,” October 30, 1916, p. 4106; Foundation Minutes, March 6, 1917, p. 5034; Foundation Minutes, April 3, 1917, p. 5040; Foundation Minutes, November 16, 1916, p. 4109 (folder 275: “Infantile Paralysis, 1916–1918,” box 25, series 200, Record Group 1.1, Projects, Rockefeller Foundation Archives). Refer especially to “Proposed Method of Organizing Orthopedic Treatment of Infantile Paralysis Cases in New York City,” p. 4, folder 277, “Infantile Paralysis—New York Committee on AfterCare, July 1916,” Rockefeller Foundation Archives (RAC). See also “Ask Rockefellers for Paralysis Aid,” New York Times, August 6, 1916 (Section 1): 15; Haven Emerson, The Epidemic of Poliomyelitis (Infantile Paralysis) in New York City in 1916: Based on the Official Reports of the Bureau of the Department of Health (1917; reprint, New York: Arno Press, 1977): 36–37;
Gareth Williams, Paralyzed with Fear: The Story of Polio (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013): 276.
Greene to Wald, August 13, 1916; Greene to Wald, November 20, 1916; “Suggested Order of Procedure for Conference of Orthopedic Surgeons, August 5, 1916”; “List of Physicians, Public Officials and Others Attending the Conference on Infantile Paralysis”; John D. Rockefeller Jr. (JDR Jr.) to Greene, August 21, 1916 (box 25, series 200, RG 1.1, Projects, Rockefeller Foundation Archives, RAC). See also Doris Fleischer and Frieda Zames, The Disability Rights Movement: From Charity to Confrontation (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2001): 10.
Barbara Bates, Bargaining for Life: A Social History of Tuberculosis, 1876–1938 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992): 252 and 255, respectively; see also pp. 22 and 254. Also see Connolly, Saving Sickly Children: 2 and 79–80;
Aaron E. Klein, Trial by Fury: The Polio Vaccine Controversy (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1972): 13.
Nancy Tomes, The Gospel of Germs: Men, Women, and the Microbe in American Life (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998): 114 and 118, respectively; see also pp. 115–17, 119, 121–27, 132, and 134.
Refer also to Thomas M. Daniel, Captain of Death: The Story of Tuberculosis (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 1997): 44–45. His informative timeline is on pp. 239–42. See also Bates, Bargaining for Life: 128.
Paul A. Offit, The Cutter Incident: How America’s First Polio Vaccine Led to the Growing Vaccine Crisis (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005): 58.
James Colgrove, State of Immunity: The Politics of Vaccination in Twentieth-Century America (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2006): 81–82, 89;
Evelynn Maxine Hammonds, Childhood’s Deadly Scourge: The Campaign to Control Diphtheria in New York City, 1880–1930 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999): 90–92;
Samuel H. Preston and Michael R. Haines, Fatal Years: Child Mortality in Late Nineteenth-Century America (Princeton: University of Princeton Press, 1991): 18–19.
Janet Mace Valenza, Taking the Waters in Texas: Springs, Spas, and Fountains of Youth (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000): 204 and 20, respectively; also consult pp. 3, 5, 8–9, 13, and 25. See also Bates, Bargaining for Life: 30;
Dr. Paul Haertl, “Notes from Europe,” Polio Chronicle November 1932 (Vol. 2, no. 4): 1 (RWSIR);
Marc Shell, Polio and Its Aftermath: The Paralysis of Culture (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005): 99–100. See Chapter 6 in Williams, Paralyzed with Fear, for a succinct description of the organizational histories of Georgia Warm Springs, the President’s Ball, and the NFIP, as well as the roles of Roosevelt and O’Connor.
Bates, Bargaining for Life: 39 and 75–77. For clarification, sanitariums served as places for convalescence, not for special treatments, while sanatoriums offered recovery therapies for tuberculosis patients (185). Bates thoroughly describes the early development of philanthropic public and private tuberculosis institutions in Pennsylvania in Chapter 9, “Economy, Charity, and the State,” and Chapter 10, “The Private Sanatoriums.” Also consult Richard Carter, The Gentle Legions: National Voluntary Health Organizations in America (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1992): 5, 63–64, 68, 71; Connolly, Saving Sickly Children: 41.
Turnley Walker, Roosevelt and the Warm Springs Story (New York: A. A. Wyn, Inc., 1953): 156, 201; see also pp. 118–19 and 142. Also see Clebourn Gregory, “Franklin Roosevelt Will Swim to Health,” Atlanta Journal, October 26, 1924: 7;
Frank Freidel, Franklin D. Roosevelt: The Ordeal (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1954): 193–98;
Hugh Gregory Gallagher, FDR’s Splendid Deception: The Moving Story of Roosevelt’s Massive Disability–and the Intense Efforts to Conceal It from the Public (Arlington, VA: Vandamere Press, 1999): 1–3, 45–46, 48–50, 53, 155, 157;
Tony Gould, A Summer Plague: Polio and its Survivors (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995): 46, 48, 50–52; Shell, Polio and Its Aftermath: 183–83;
David L. Sills, The Volunteers: Means and Ends in a National Organization (1957; reprint, New York: Arno Press, 1980): 42, 45;
James Tobin, The Man He Became: How FDR Defied Polio to Win the Presidency (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2013): 204, 219.
Carter, The Gentle Legions: 107 and 115. Refer also to “Correspondence beginning May 15, 1928,” Basil O’Connor to JDR Jr., November 3, 1933, “Invitation to Mrs. John D. Rockefeller Jr. to the Birthday Ball for the President of the United States for the benefit of Warm Springs Foundation, to be held 30 January 1934”; and “Different Parties” and “Celebration in New York,” President’s Birthday Magazine 1, no. 3 (1938): 19, 32–33, folder 113, box 14, Medical Interests series, RG 2, Office of the Messrs. Rockefeller (OMR), Rockefeller Family Archives, RAC; Arthur Allen, Vaccine: The Controversial Story of Medicine’s Greatest Lifesaver (New York: W. W. Norton Company, 2007): 164–65;
Victor Cohn, Four Billion Dimes (Minneapolis, MN: Minneapolis Star and Tribune, 1955): 36–38, 40–41, 43, 51; Offit, The Cutter Incident: 20; Sills, The Volunteers: 42–44; Tobin, The Man He Became: 221 and 251; Walker, Roosevelt and the Warm Springs Story: 218–19, 223–25, 227, 229–31, 238, and 252.
Williams, Paralyzed with Fear: 134; “‘To Unify the Fight:’ A New National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis,” folder 117, box 14, Medical Interests series, RG 2, Rockefeller Family Archives, OMR, RAC. Also see Cohn, Four Billion Dimes: 52; Gallagher, FDR’s Splendid Deception: 150; 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): 65;
Naomi Rogers, Dirt and Disease: Polio Before FDR (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996): 170;
David W. Rose, Images of America: March of Dimes (Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2003): 79.
Nancy Tomes, “Celebrity Diseases,” 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): 37, 41, 48.
“‘To Unify the Fight:’ A New National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis,” folder 117, box 14, Medical Interests series, RG 2, OMR, Rockefeller Family Archives, RAC (italics in the original). Susan Sontag, in Illness As Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors (New York: Picador, 1989), has wrongly written that polio is “unmetaphorical” (127); yet, as we see from the NFIP’s warlike rhetoric, this is not the case. Shell, in Polio and Its Aftermath, likewise disagrees with her assertion (186–87).
Allan M. Brandt, “Polio, Politics, Publicity, and Duplicity: Ethical Aspects in the Development of the Salk Vaccine,” International Journal of Health Services 8 (1978): 258; National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, The Philadelphia Chapter—Year 1953: 3–4, 6 (Folder 2: National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, Joseph Stokes, Jr., Papers, APS).
Mawdsley, “Polio and Prejudice”: 34, 35–36, and 41, respectively; refer as well to pp. 29 and 37–41. See also Naomi Rogers, “Race and the Politics of Polio: Warm Springs, Tuskegee, and the March of Dimes,” American Journal of Public Health 97 (May 2007): 791–92;
Heather Green Wooten, The Polio Years in Texas: Battling a Terrifying Unknown (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2009): 98.
Charles L. Mee, A Nearly Normal Life (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1999): 39. Consult also Rogers, Dirt and Disease: 172; Shell, Polio and Its Aftermath: 145.
David M. Oshinsky, Polio: An American Story (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005): 82.
Nina Gilden Seavey, Jane S. Smith, and Paul Wagner, A Paralyzing Fear: The Triumph Over Polio in America (New York: TV Books, 1998): 74.
Massey and Boyer in Seavey, Smith, and Wagner, A Paralyzing Fear: 92; see also pp. 78–80. Also see Lorenzo W. Milam, The Cripple Liberation Front Marching Band Blues (San Diego, CA: Mho & Mho Works, 1987): 54–55.
Brenda Serotte, The Fortune Teller’s Kiss (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006): 76–77;
J. N. Hays, The Burdens of Disease: Epidemics and Human Response in Western History (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1998): 266;
Martin F. Norden, The Cinema of Isolation: A History of Physical Disability in the Movies (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1994): 68–72;
Daniel J. Wilson, Living with Polio: The Epidemic and Its Survivors (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005): 16–17.
Leonard Kriegel, Falling into Life (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1991): 67.
Marshall in Julie Silver and Daniel J. Wilson, Polio Voices: An Oral History from the American Polio Epidemics and Worldwide Eradication Efforts (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2007): 52–53;
Anne Finger, Elegy for A Disease: A Personal and Cultural History of Polio (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2006): 109.
Joseph P. Shapiro, No Pity: People with Disabilities Forging a New Civil Rights Movement (New York: Three Rivers Press, 1994): 12–13.
Rosemarie Garland Thomson, “Seeing the Disabled: Visual Rhetorics of Disability in Popular Photography,” in Paul K. Longmore and Lauri Umansky (eds.), The New Disability History: American Perspectives (New York: New York University Press, 2001): 339–40, 341, 342, 355; the indented quote is on p. 356.
Fred Davis, in Passage through Crisis: Polio Victims and Their Families (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1963), reinforces Garland Thomson’s point: “Polio, unlike any other disease, evoked a strong, emotional public response. It came to occupy a pre-eminent—according to some, an exaggerated—place in the awareness, sympathy, and philanthropy of the American people. By the time of the development of the Salk vaccine it had emerged in popular thought as more than a sometimes crippling disease of children; it was regarded as a powerful symbol of blind, devastating, and uncontrollable misfortune whose victims were specially entitled to the support of good will of the community” (6).
Roger Cooter, in “The Disabled Body” (in Roger Cooter and John Pickstone [eds.], Medicine in the Twentieth Century [Australia: Harwood Academic Publishers, 2000]), expresses similar sentiments: “The crippled child who could be encouraged to stand or walk without a crutch provided a model of self-help; glowing representations of crippled children triumphing over their handicaps provided an idealization of what (without state aid) individuals could do for themselves” (370–71).
See also Paul K. Longmore and David Goldberger, “The League of the Physically Handicapped and the Great Depression: A Case Study in the New Disability History,” Journal of American History 87 (December 2000): 896; Shapiro, No Pity: 12.
Philip Lewin, Infantile Paralysis: Anterior Poliomyelitis (Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders Co., 1941): 326. No attribution.
Charles L. Lowman and Morton A. Seidenfeld, “A Preliminary Report of the Psychosocial Effects of Poliomyelitis,” Journal of Consulting Psychology 11 (1947): 30–31. These same researchers acknowledge that the NFIP maintained a higher figure: 50 percent of those infected by polio had a major physical disability (31).
Garland Thomson, “Seeing the Disabled”: 348, 346, and 347, respectively. Also refer to Daniel J. Wilson, “A Crippling Fear: Experiencing Polio in the Era of FDR,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 72 (1998): 487.
These three quotes are from Sharon Barnartt and Richard Scotch, Disability Protests: Contentious Politics, 1970–1999 (Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press, 2001): xxiii. See also Cooter, “The Disabled Body”: 369.
Rosemarie Garland Thomson, Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997): 6, 13–14, 22–23; Fleischer and Zames, The Disability Rights Movement: xv;
Ruth O’Brien, Crippled Justice: The History of Modern Disability Policy in the Workplace (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001): 1–2.
Douglas C. Baynton, “Disability and the Justification of Inequality in American History,” in Paul K. Longmore and Lauri Umansky (eds.), The New Disability History: American Perspectives (New York: New York University Press, 2001): 35, 36. Emphasis is in the original text.
Marilynnne Rogers in Edmund J. Sass, George Gottfried, and Anthony Sorem, Polio’s Legacy: An Oral History (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1996): 59.
See Claire H. Liachowitz, Disability as a Social Construct: Legislative Roots (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988), for a systematic analysis of the relationship between public policy and disability. The quote is on p. 1.
Susan M. Schweik, The Ugly Laws: Disability in Public (New York: New York University Press, 2009): 1–5 and 184, respectively. Refer to pp. 94–97 as well.
Hugh Gregory Gallagher, Black Bird Fly Away: Disabled in an Able-Bodied World (Arlington, VA: Vandamere Press, 1998): 28;
Robert Bogdan, Freak Show: Presenting Human Oddities for Amusement and Profit (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988): 6.
Edith Reeves Solenberger, Public School Classes for Crippled Children. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Education, Bulletin No. 10 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1918): iii, 2.
Charles E. Rosenberg, The Care of Strangers: The Rise of America’s Hospital System (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987): 150; Solenberger, Public School Classes for Crippled Children: 5, 29, and 33–36.
Rosenberg, The Care of Strangers: 316–17; see also pp. 318 and 321. Also see Leonard Kriegel, The Long Walk Home: An Adventure in Survival (New York: Appleton-Century, 1964): 138.
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): 44, 76–79, 80, 83–84, 92–93, 113; Wooten, The Polio Years in Texas: 3, 107, and 113.
Brad Byrom, “A Pupil and a Patient: Hospital Schools in Progressive America,” in Paul K. Longmore and Lauri Umansky (eds.), The New Disability History: American Perspectives (New York: New York University Press, 2001): 136.
The information in the preceding four paragraphs can be found in Steven E. Koop, We Hold this Treasure: The Story of Gillette Children’s Hospital (Afton, MN: Afton Historical Society Press, 1998): 6–7, 8–10, 14–17, 19, 22–23, 28, 30–33, 37–38, 40, 50–52, 54, 69, and 98.
Helen McNellis and Jerry McNellis, “Don’t Pick Him Up”: Our Family’s Experience with Polio (Beaver Falls, PA: BrainTrain Press, 2011): 24, 15, 18–19, and 16, respectively. See also p. 20.
Francis R. Harbison, D. T. Watson of Counsel (Pittsburgh, PA: Davis & Warde, 1945): 289 and 291, respectively. Refer also to pp. 27, 37, 48, 55, 67–68, and 287–88. Watson’s complete will is reprinted on pp. 288–91.
Jeffrey Kluger, Splendid Solution: Jonas Salk and the Conquest of Polio (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2004): 156; consult page 170 as well.
See also Lawrence Alexander, as told to Adam Barnett, The Iron Cradle: My Fight Against Polio (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1954): 126;
Peg Kehret, Small Steps: The Year I Got Polio (Morton Grove, IL: 1996): 109, 119;
Jane S. Smith, Patenting the Sun: Polio and the Salk Vaccine (New York: William Morrow and Co., 1990): 140;
Louis Sternburg and Dorothy Sternburg, View from the Seesaw (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1986): 50;
Dee Van Balen, The Closing Door (Pittsburgh, PA: CreateSpace, 2010): 6; WIA.
Patrick J. Bird, A Rough Road (Amazon.com: 2012): 196–97. See also pp. i, ii, 5, 23, 55, 98–99, 113, and 181–83.
Richard L. Bruno, The Polio Paradox: Understanding and Treating “Post-Polio Syndrome” and Chronic Fatigue (New York: Warner Books, 2002): 76–77.
Robert L. Osgood, For “Children Who Vary from the Normal Type”: Special Education in Boston, 1838–1930 (Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press, 2000): 43. See pp. 46 and 49 as well.
Solenberger, Public School Classes for Crippled Children: 31–32, 37–38, 56, and 73; Douglas C. McMurtrie, “A Study of the Character and Present Status of Provisions for Crippled Children in the United States,” American Journal of Care for Cripples 2 (1916): 24–38, reprinted in William R. F. Phillips & Janet Rosenberg (eds.), The Origins of Modern Treatment and Education of Physically Handicapped Children (New York: Arno Press, 1980): 34–35. Also refer to Elliot White, “The Inception and Development of an Institute for Negro Crippled Children,” pp. 171–74 in that same publication.
Mee, A Nearly Normal Life: 175. Rogers’s and Gallagher’s recollections can be found in Seavey, Smith, and Wagner, A Paralyzing Fear, 32 and 55, respectively. Gurney’s oral history is quoted in Sass, Gottfried, and Sorem, Polio’s Legacy: 28. See also Susan Richards Shreve, Warm Springs: Traces of a Childhood at FDR’s Polio Haven (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2007): 142. The final statement is quoted on p. 83 in Bruno, The Polio Paradox.
Copyright information
© 2015 Richard J. Altenbaugh
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Altenbaugh, R.J. (2015). After Treatment. In: The Last Children’s Plague. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137527851_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137527851_3
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-57617-3
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-52785-1
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)