The Polio Years in Texas

The silent scourge that held a generation in fear . . . From the 1930s to the 1950s, paralytic poliomyelitis ("polio") threatened the lives of children and adults in Texas, arousing the same kind of fear more recently associated with AIDS and other dread diseases. Harris County had the second-highest rate of infection in the nation, and the rest of the Texas Gulf Coast was particularly hard-hit by this debilitating illness. At the time, though little was known at first, the medical responses to polio changed the medical landscape forever, giving rise to the development of rehabilitative therapies, the modern intensive care unit, and a wave of discoveries in virology that transformed the field. Polio also had a sweeping cultural and societal effect. In addition to engendering fearful responses from parents trying to keep children safe from its ravages and an all-out public information blitz aimed at helping a frightened population protect itself, polio exacted a very real toll on the families, friends, healthcare resources, and social fabric of those who contracted the disease and endured its acute, convalescent, and rehabilitation phases. In The Polio Years in Texas: Battling a Terrifying Unknown, Heather Green Wooten draws on extensive archival research as well as interviews conducted over a five-year period with Texas polio survivors and their families. The picture that emerges is a detailed and intensely human account, not only of the epidemics that swept Texas during the polio years, but also of the continuing aftermath of the disease for those who are still living with its effects. Interested general readers, public health and medical professionals, and historians will derive deep and lasting benefits from reading The Polio Years in Texas: Battling a Terrifying Unknown. Heather Green Wooten earned her PhD in medical humanities from the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. She is an educator and independent historian living in League City, Texas.