Postwar Polio, 1945-1950

In the early and mid-1900s, the United States endured multiple epidemics of poliomyelitis (or polio), a virus that caused muscle paralysis and was in many cases fatal for those it affected. A point of note is that contrary to the title “infantile paralysis” polio could strike adults, as well as infants and children, as one of polio’s more notable victims, US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt “contracted the disease at age 39 in 1921.”[1] The reason polio was so feared during this time, was that besides the fact it was affecting large numbers of Americans, there was little information (at least in the first few decades of the polio epidemics in the US) on how polio spread, or what caused it. This is best summed up by historian Karen Wellner: “At the time the poliovirus was known to be the causative agent, but it remained a mystery as to how one ‘caught' polio. Did it have something to do with the new method of pasteurizing milk? Was it carried by flies, mosquitoes, and household cats? Was the virus carried on clothes, coal dust, or street grit, and then easily transmitted to humans?”[2] That said, in time some answers were discovered as to how polio spread or worked. For example, when Caldwell, Idaho, was struck by polio in October 1947, the town's inhabitants were confused as polio was supposedly spread by flies, but Caldwell had “successfully waged war on flies,” with no flies reportedly existing in town at the time of the outbreak.[3] Additionally, a Twin Falls Times-News article speculated that unripe fruit was to blame for polio.[4]

However, for all the fears and damage it caused, polio, for the most part, did not become epidemic “in the United States until the years following World War II.”[5] According to a report done by the Idaho State Department of Public Health in 1948, Idaho had its first major exposure to polio in the “summer of 1947.”[6] Furthermore, according to the same report, most of the initial cases of poliomyelitis were in Ada County, but it soon spread to “thirty-three of Idaho’s 44 counties.”[7] This is further evidenced, by the earlier cited Caldwell and Times news articles that said, while the spread of Polio was significant, the Department of Public Health noted that Idaho was not as badly hit as one might think, noting that “ while the death rate seems high and it was actually lower.”[8]

Prior to the development of vaccines for polio, specifically by Jonas Salk, there were few methods of preventing polio. A newspaper in Montana recommended that to lessen the risk of polio people should “ follow the ordinary rules of good health. It is especially urged that individuals, more particularly children, do not over-exert themselves and thus weaken their resistance to all diseases. The proper rest, the proper food and healthful out door exercise are recommended as deterrents to poliomyelitis well as other diseases.”[9] As for those who had polio, one option available was for the afflicted to use a device called an iron lung, a primitive respirator designed to aid those who were paralyzed in breathing. A newspaper from Pocatello in 1949, mentioned that Pocatello police officers “ smashed speed records between Idaho Falls and Pocatello in rushing delivery of an iron lung part from Idaho Falls LDS Hospital to the Gate City Institution.”[10]

To summarize, like the rest of the country, Idaho was hit by polio in the aftermath of World War II. While polio overwhelmed more than half of Idaho’s counties, the disease did not hit as badly in Idaho as it did in other states during the same time. However, as polio was not well understood, few measures could be taken to prevent it, or to help those affected by it prior to the Salk vaccine.

Martin Bender, June 2021