I don't usually write about myself in this blog, but after two years of the COVID pandemic, I decided that a story from my life might put some things into perspective.
On August 12, 1954, the front page of the Trenton Evening Times carried a story that Trenton had registered its third case of Polio. The article listed my name, age, address, my parents' names, and the hospital to which I had been admitted. It also noted that I had attended the Jewish Community Center Day Camp and that the camp had been given permission to operate as usual for the few remaining days of its season.1 Clearly, the intention was to notify everyone with whom I had been in contact. I spent ten days at McKinley hospital in a coma, during which my parents were told to prepare for my death, and when I woke up, I was moved to the Trenton Orthopedic Hospital, an Art Deco structure at the corner of Brunswick and Cavell Avenues in Trenton.2 Many of the patients there suffered from Polio and its effects. Many were children. Like me many were confined to beds, unable to move, or were using wheelchairs. I was in a private room on an all adult floor, but when I was able to use a wheelchair often visited the other children in the ward, and most of us attended school in a one-room school the hospital provided.
Polio was recognized as early as 1894 and there were periodic epidemics, mostly in the summer months. The paralysis could strike anywhere in the body but often started in the legs. The fatality rate was 2-5% for children and 15-30% for adolescents and adults. If paralysis struck it was often permanent as it was for me. If it struck the abdomen and lungs, the fatality rate could go as high as 75%. There had been a widespread epidemic in the US in 1952 with more than 57,000 cases of which 21,000 had been paralytic.3. There was no vaccine and no cure, and communities were on edge if the disease appeared in the summer.
President Franklin Roosevelt who had been paralyzed by Polio as an adult in 1921 had campaigned since then to find a vaccine to combat the disease. In 1938 comedian Eddie Cantor had suggested on the radio that folks send dimes to President Roosevelt to aid the fight against Polio. Within weeks nearly a 2.7 million dimes had been sent to the White House and the charity The March of Dimes was born with the aim of funding the search for a vaccine against Polio4
I spent more than a month at Orthopedic Hospital, receiving excellent if often painful physical therapy treatments. Twice a day they would roll a machine full of boiling water and heavy wool Army blankets into my room. They would wrap me in the hot wet blankets from neck to toes and leave me with a tray of iced drinks for what seemed forever. I took treatments in a whirlpool bath that left me with a permanent dislike of hot tubs. I learned to walk again. I wore a brace holding my right arm up in the air for more than a year, and orthopedic shoes for longer. I had lots of visits from family and adult friends at the hospital (no children were allowed to visit so my brother spent hours in the car in the parking lot - different times), and as is shown in the photo above, decided to charge my visitors a contribution to the March of Dimes for the privilege of visiting me. My plan was covered in the newspaper which noted that I had raised $6.29 in the previous week.5
A vaccine against Polio was in trials in 1954 and was approved in 1955. A massive effort has been underway since then to eradicate wild Polio worldwide. It was declared gone in the Americas in 1991, Europe in 2002, and Southeast Asia in 2014, By 2017 it was endemic in only three countries, but since then conflicts in Africa, Syria, Pakistan, and other areas have made it difficult to reach and vaccinate children so numbers have ticked up.6 The progress shows that a vaccination campaign can work against a disease that maims and kills. Recent vaccine skepticism has raised fears that other diseases will re-appear as children do not get readily available vaccines against them.
Get vaccinated.
1. Mild Polio Case is Reported Here. Trenton Evening Times Thursday Aug12, 1954, Trenton NJ, page 1. Accessed from GenealogyBank.com 2/7/2022
2. North Trenton, New Jersey. Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Trenton,_New_Jersey. Accessed Feb 7, 2022.
3. Polio Vaccine https://www.historyofvaccines.org/timeline#EVT_100335 Accessed Feb 7, 2022
4. Polio Vavvine Loc. Cit. Accessed Feb 7, 2022
5. Patient aids Polio Drive Trenton Evening Times Wednesday, Sept 1, 1954, Trenton NJ, page 4. Accessed from GenealogyBank.com 2/7/2022
6. Polio Vavvine Loc. Cit. Accessed Feb 7, 2022
