Photos from the Past

If Fio looks at school photos from the 1950's, she often spots students with withered limbs or confined to  wheelchairs---the polio kids, as they were called.  But they were the lucky ones.  The children in iron lungs didn't make it to the photo shoot.

According to Wikipedia, "Until 1955, when the Salk vaccine was introduced, polio was considered the most frightening public health problem of the post-war United States.  Annual epidemics were increasingly devastating. The 1952 epidemic was the worst outbreak in the nation's history. Of nearly 58,000 cases reported that year, 3,145 people died and 21,269 were left with mild to disabling paralysis, with most of its victims being children."

Parents, make sure your children are vaccinated.  Polio is down but not out. Neither are mumps, measles, chicken pox, whooping cough, and a host of others.