When we look back on 2021, it's likely that the development, approval, and distribution of multiple vaccines to significantly limit the spread and impact of COVID-19 will be one of the most dramatic stories and achievements in the United States during this year. However incomplete and inconsistent the process of public vaccination has been, the medical breakthrough has helped bring much of the nation out of the depths of a devastating, global pandemic. In that context, Idaho State University History students conducted research to examine the public fear of polio and the eventual development, testing, and distribution of vaccines in the mid-twentieth century to eradicate that virus from American life. This site presents blog posts written by individual students on various aspects of the story of polio and the campaign to fight it told through the experiences and contributions of Idahoans during the twentieth century.

Polio, known more commonly through the first half of the century as poliomyelitis and infantile paralysis, never reached the severity of the influenza pandemic of 1918-1920 or the COVID pandemic of 2020-2021. In the United States, the numbers of victims increased consistently over the decades, and 1952 saw that widest outbreak of cases. In that year, around 58,000 victims were documented. Compare this to the early weeks of 2021 when over 250,000 new cases of COVID-19 arose every day. Polio looks like a minor nuisance in that context, but it's valuable to understand that the fear was real. As the historian David Oshinsky writes, "No disease drew as much attention, or struck the same terror, as polio."[1] It was uniquely frightening to American families, but it also became the center of a national crusade to eradicate it, led by the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis and the various tools of its March of Dimes campaigns. Idahoans in those decades experienced the fear, and they also contributed to the crusade that led to multiple successful vaccines that emerged during the 1950s. The following contributions, accessible from the drop-down menu above, examine polio in Idaho through various specific topics.

Kevin R. Marsh, Professor of History

[1] David M. Oshinsky, Polio: An American Story (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 5.

Contributors:

Kevin Marsh, Professor

Taylor Baggerly

Martin Bender

Daniel Bickar

Brandon Cook

Mackenzie Cooper

Kristin Gulley

Melissa Hill

Corbin LeBaron

Spencer McArthur

Lillian Molina

Samantha Phillips

Laura Sandoval

Nancy Shiozawa

Matthew Stark

Ryan Suppe

Chad Whitaker