The Polio Years in Texas: Battling a Terrifying Unknown Direct download links available The Polio Years in Texas: Battling a Terrifying Unknown [Kindle Edition] from with Mediafire Link Download Link
From the 1930s to the 1950s, in response to the rising epidemic of paralytic poliomyelitis (polio), Texas researchers led a wave of discoveries in virology, rehabilitative therapies, and the modern intensive care unit that transformed the field nationally.
The disease threatened the lives of children and adults in the United States, especially in the South, arousing the same kind of fear more recently associated with AIDS and other dread diseases. Houston and Harris County, Texas, had the second-highest rate of infection in the nation, and the rest of the Texas Gulf Coast was particularly hard-hit by this debilitating illness. At the time, little was known, but eventually the medical responses to polio changed the medical landscape forever.
Polio also had a sweeping cultural and societal effect. It engendered fearful responses from parents trying to keep children safe from its ravages and an all-out public information blitz aimed at helping a frightened population protect itself. The disease exacted a very real toll on the families, friends, healthcare resources, and social fabric of those who contracted the disease and endured its acute, convalescent, and rehabilitation phases.
In The Polio Years in Texas, Heather Green Wooten draws on extensive archival research as well as interviews conducted over a five-year period with Texas polio survivors and their families. This is a detailed and intensely human account of not only the epidemics that swept Texas during the polio years, but also of the continuing aftermath of the disease for those who are still living with its effects.
Public health and medical professionals, historians, and interested general readers will derive deep and lasting benefits from reading The Polio Years in Texas.
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Heather has written a book that is well researched and has many interview records with people who weathered the effects of the disease themselves or helped a child or other relative to recover.
Our eldest daughter contracted polio when she was five years old and unlike some parents I was able to stay with her during her time in isolation. This was in January of 1950 and a hospital in Beaumont, TX was in the process of opening a designated ward for polio patients. She and I spent three weeks alone on an otherwise vacant floor. The therapist who was to begin treatments was contacted and arrived expeditiously. There was the huge Hubbard Tub for the water therapy and the agonizing hot packs which were a part of the therapy at that time.
Later funds for March of Dimes were low, our insurance had been used to the limit, and her grandfather who had had polio when he was twelve (about 1900) sent supplemental funds to help cover expenses. I became the care taker at home who gave the painful exercises to my child and she saw the therapist at intervals for evaluation. After several months the stiffness gradually was worked out of all areas except her left leg. Several surgeries followed at growth intervals to enable the growth and use of the leg. Over the years I have been rewarded by hearing her tell someone what her mother had helped to accomplish during her recovery.
Thank you, Heather, for your subject choice and hard work.
By Imogene Pulleine
This book was so good for me, and answered many of my questions. My father was one of 75 children who were diagnosed with polio in the San Antonio epidemic in the fall of 1942 (described in this book). I plan to write the author and personally thank her for the information she so capably organized and put into writing. This is a story that needed to be told. My father benefited from the zeal felt in Texas that the children with polio needed to go to college - this is described in the book. His expenses were paid to go to Texas A&M College as a "rehabilitative student" in 1944. Currently we have 3rd generation Aggies in my family attending Texas A&M. I could say more, but I especially encourage anyone who had a family member affected by polio to read this book.
By DJ