Polio

Daniel J. Wilson

• Publisher: Greenwood
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9780313358975
• eBook ISBN: 9780313358982
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Diseases & Allergies

A compelling account of the most feared childhood disease of the 20th century and its impact on victims and medical science. This new title in the Biographies of Disease series offers a thorough examination of medical and scientific efforts to battle polio, from the 19th-century identification of the virus to the great 20th-century epidemics, from the unprecedented campaign to find a vaccine to recent efforts to confront polio in West Africa and South Asia and eliminate it entirely. Beyond the science, Polio looks at the effects of the disease on individuals and the United States as a whole. The book gives readers a sense of what it was like to have polio and to recover from it. It also describes how the search for answers to polio led to the rise of one of America's premier medical charities—the March of Dimes—and how modern physical therapy practices emerged alongside the polio epidemics of the 20th century.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Series Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1. Poliomyelitis and the Poliovirus
• Chapter 2. Early Evidence of Polio and the First Epidemics
• Chapter 3. Science, Medicine, and the Search for a Cure
• Chapter 4. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Polio, and Warm Springs
• Chapter 5. Scientific Research and the First Human Vaccine Trials
• Chapter 6. The March of Dimes and the Campaign against Polio
• Chapter 7. Summers of Fear: Acute Polio
• Chapter 8. Convalescent Polio and Rehabilitation
• Chapter 9. The Search for a Polio Vaccine
• Chapter 10. The Polio Vaccines of Salk and Sabin
• Chapter 11. Living with Polio
• Chapter 12. The Campaign to Eradicate Polio
• Polio Timeline
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Index