| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.3

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Daniel J. Wilson. Living with Polio: The Epidemic and Its Survivors. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 2005. Pp. xii, 300. $29.00. David M. Oshinsky. Polio: An American Story. New York: Oxford University Press. 2005. Pp. viii, 342. $30.00.
The early 1950s was a fearful time. Joseph McCarthy ranted and hunted alleged subversives, and school children were taught to hide under classroom desks—a pathetically inadequate defense in an age when atomic attack seemed imminent. And then there was the epidemic of polio, or infantile paralysis, as it was often called. In the summers, mothers and fathers quaked fearfully with their children's every chill. Might this be the beginning of a paralysis that would never recede, that would leave their young disabled for life? Some fears of the 1950s outlasted the century. Thanks to Jonas Salk, Albert Sabin, Hilary Koprowski, John Enders, Tom Rivers, Isabel Morgan, and many other scientists and physicians, however, the nation's children reclaimed playgrounds and pools. That is, all except those who were already felled by the polio virus. Some of its victims suffered for the rest of their lives with what the disease had done to their bodies, if not their spirits.	1
David M. Oshinsky's and Daniel J. Wilson's books complement each other, providing the fullest story told thus far of the feared disease, its conquerors, its victims, and its last American epidemic in the 1950s. No author tells with greater clarity and broader vision the story of polio research in the United States than Oshinsky. No one has heretofore offered as thorough description of polio's victims and how their lives were transformed by their disabilities as Wilson.	2
As does an orchestra conductor, Oshinsky offers readers an ensemble of perspectives on the race for the cure, treating the intersection of social, political, economic, and cultural narratives. The most suspenseful narrative is the gripping detective story of scientific research, seasoned by the clash of great egos and fascinating personalities. After Enders demonstrated that the polio virus could be cultured, the race was on to see which of the brilliant researchers engaged in the competition could prevail and save the lives of America's children. Should scientists develop a vaccine with killed virus, the method favored by Salk, or vaccinate with live virus to stimulate the immune system, the approach preferred by Sabin? Both men were New Yorkers from poor, Eastern European Jewish backgrounds. Both were brilliant and combative. The first person to come close to a vaccine using live virus was neither Salk nor Sabin but the quiet, gentle Morgan, who in the midst of a promising career retreated from her Johns Hopkins laboratory, choosing marriage and motherhood over research in an era when many women could not envision doing all three.	3
Both Salk and Sabin received support from the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis. The Foundation preferred Salk, who promised speed, to Sabin, who followed the slower, traditional route of science. But the first to test live virus on human subjects was Lederle Laboratories' Koprowski, who, much to the consternation of many, tested it on mentally disabled children at New York's Letchworth Village. In the end, Salk, too, boldly risked human testing, first on his own children and eventually in a much celebrated national test of 1.5 million school children in spring 1954. It was a success. Salk won the race for the vaccine, brashly basking in his fame, but never forgetting his goal of saving children from suffering. His vaccine required three injections plus a "booster" to provide full immunity. In spite of a 1955 tragedy, when Cutter Laboratories botched production of a shipment of Salk's killed virus vaccine, resulting in polio cases, millions of American children, including the reviewer, were lining up for their shots with sleeves rolled.	. . .

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