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Looking Back: Polio Vaccine 50th Anniversary |
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Fifty years ago, on April 12, 1955, it was announced to the world that the Salk vaccine was 60 to 90 percent effective in preventing paralytic polio. But fear of the crippling, highly contagious disease still gripped the nation -- in fact, the city of Boston experienced its worst polio epidemic in the summer that followed.
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Footage from the CHB Archives
Excerpts from a training movie shot in the 1950s, narrated by physical therapist Claire McCarthy (left), who worked at Children's at the time.
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Gallery: Treating Polio at Children's Hospital Boston
Polio-related photographs from the 1950s and earlier. Includes photos of hydrotherapy pool, iron lungs, therapy rooms, staff and patients.
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Audio Clips: Polio Survivor Stories
What was it was like to be stricken with polio and sent to the hospital? Listen to what these survivors have to say.
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Polio Then and Now
Find out about the development of the iron lung, skating champion and polio survivor Tenley Albright (left), the culture of polio and post-polio syndrome.
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Polio Survivor's Reunion
On April 9, 2005, Children's Hospital Boston, Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, and Harvard Medical School held a polio survivors' reunion and symposium in Boston. Over 300 polio survivors, their families, and clinicians from around New England gathered to commemorate the vaccine and their own experience with the disease.
The event recounted the history of polio, gave a survivor's perspective (that of Tenley Albright, MD, a Harvard surgeon and Olympic Gold Medalist), addressed polio's hidden aftermath, and looked at virology then and now. Artifacts, photographs, news clips, a 1950s polio training film, and excerpts from Spaulding's Polio Oral History Project were on view.
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