Children of the iron lung.

Serious outbreaks of polio in Britain began in 1947. There were 50,000 cases during the following ten years. Here, polio survivors and relatives of those who caught the disease describe their experiences, with comments from Sir George Godber (Deputy Chief Medical Officer 1950-60), Dr. Anne Hardy (Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL), Tony Gould (author of Polio and Its Survivors), and Dr. Geoffrey Spencer (former director of the Lane Fox Respiratory Unit). Witnesses describe the fear generated by polio; no-one knew where it originated and doctors did not know how best to treat it. Paralysis generally receded within weeks, although some patients were paralysed for much longer and being confined to an iron lung was frightening and claustrophobic. About 7 months would be spent in an isolation hospital, followed by months, perhaps years, of painful physiotherapy. The disease was more familiar in the USA where there had been epidemics since the beginning of the 20th century. President F.D. Roosevelt established the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis (as polio was then called) and out of this fundraising came Jonas Salk's vaccine, given to 9000 children in the USA in 1952. By 1955 the vaccine was available nationwide but Britain, with 6000 cases of polio that year, was unwilling to adopt it. By 1956 a British vaccine was available, but quantities were limited - only 1 in 8 children under the age of 9 years could be vaccinated. There were 3000 cases of polio that year and with the 1957 Coventry outbreak demand grew for the import of the US vaccine. Britain's argument was that the British vaccine was safer than the Salk one, but the cost was 240 deaths and 4000 people left permanently disabled. For these casualties, life after leaviang hospital was hard. Britain at that time was reluctant to recognise disability and people were left to their own resources. At last, in 1958, Britain accepted the US vaccine. The death from polio of footballer Geoff Hall in 1959 did much to encourage people to come forward for vaccination. The development in the USA of the Sabin vaccine, which could be administered on a sugar lump, made vaccination simpler and was first used in Britain to halt the 1961 Hull outbreak. By the mid-1960s polio epidemics in Britain were at an end and there are now only one or two cases a year.