3 of 24 - Polio in Cornwall - Infectious Origins for me

 

I don’t know how that goo got me back in 1958. 

Perhaps an asymptomatic and entirely innocent fisherman wiped his arse with a clump of grass and tossed the mess away. And there it was, pungently waiting for two-year-old me. Or maybe it was artfully spat out by a farmer on a passing Fordson Major. It could have been an invisible smear on a glass of Corona Raspberryade given to me by a kind neighbour. 

The polio virus could have entered my body in any of these, and thousands of similar scenarios. What I do know is that the accidental meeting of me and the poliomyelitis virus happened and I, and my gait, would never be the same again.

During the 1950's there were 45,000 cases of polio in the UK and hundreds died. Pure fluke allowed me to walk away, one withered leg a few inches short of its partner, and missing its calf muscle, but walking. So many others were much less lucky. Just look up pictures of “1950’s Iron Lung” and you will see exactly what I mean. 

In the UK, including Cornwall, the vaccine rollout began in 1956, and by the end of the decade, polio incidence had fallen dramatically. But long before my own encounter with the virus, the battle against polio had already begun.

In the early decades of the 20th century, polio was widespread in the USA . Even President Franklin D. Roosevelt was struck by the disease in 1921, at age 39, and years before his inauguration. His personal battle led to the founding of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis—later known as the “March of Dimes”—a grassroots fundraising movement that helped finance the development of a vaccine.

Jonas Salk’s inactivated polio vaccine, introduced in 1955, was a triumph of science and public hope. It was safe, effective, and widely embraced—until Cutter Laboratories released batches that had not been properly inactivated. The result was devastating: around 40,000 children developed mild polio, 200 were left with paralysis, and 10 died. Up to that point, not a single case of polio had been caused by Salk’s vaccine.

The Cutter Incident shook public confidence. In response, the U.S. turned to Albert Sabin’s oral vaccine, which used live attenuated virus and was easier to administer. But it carried its own risk: roughly one case of full-blown polio per 500,000 doses. After several years, the tide turned again—Salk’s vaccine was reintroduced, and Sabin’s was gradually phased out.

My withered leg did mean that I was subjected to several years of periodic hospital visits where I was obliged to drop my shorts to allow busy nurses to press cold tape measure tangs into the flesh of my hips and ankles to measure the length of my odd length legs. My parents were advised that I should wear a surgical built-up boot to compensate for my shortened leg, which I did, right up to the baby rabbit incident.

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