ry, known as the peripheral disintegration model, is the most widely accepted theory regarding neuromuscular dysfunction. In this model, when the polio virus invades the motor neurons, health neurons begin to degenerate. Along with this degeneration comes the denervation of the muscle fibers associated with the neuron. When this process occurs on a large enough scale, the individual typically experiences loss of muscular function, including weakness and paralysis. In 1908, Karl Landsteiner determined that it was a virus, not a bacteria, that was responsible for poliomyelitis (Timeline 2). It was only eight years later that thousands of New Yorkers fled the city in order to escape a massive polio epidemic in 1916 (Timeline 2).
Children being most susceptible to poliomyelitis created enormous concern and alarm across America. By 1927, the War Springs Foundation had been established where polio patients lived comfortably as possible, including braces and supports for their bodies and iron lungs for many. By 1935, more than 17,000 children had been inoculated against the virus in vaccine trials (Timeline 4). By 1938, the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis and the March of Dimes had been organized, with President Franklin Delano Roosevelt a victim of polio paralysis himself.
In the early 1940s, Dr. Jonas Salk developed his killed-virus influenza vaccine which would lead to the Salk polio vaccine in 1955. This, along with the development of the Sabin oral vaccine in 1961, would help put an end to polio in the US “By the mid-1960s, with massive immunization campaigns underway, the incidence of new polio cases had dropped to about 0.01 per 100,000 persons per year” (About 6).
All societies are constructions of human beings in the face of chaos. Certainly, viral epidemics like polio and AIDS immediately engender a socially constructed response from the state and its citizens. Polio’s appearance in epidemic ...