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Poliomyelitis (/ ˌ p oʊ l i oʊ ˌ m aɪ ə ˈ l aɪ t ɪ s / POH-lee-oh-MY-ə-LY-tiss), commonly shortened to polio, is an infectious disease caused by the poliovirus. [1] Approximately 75% of cases are asymptomatic; [5] mild symptoms which can occur include sore throat and fever; in a proportion of cases more severe symptoms develop such as headache, neck stiffness, and paresthesia.
Polio was a plague. One day you had a headache and an hour later you were paralyzed. How far the virus crept up your spine determined whether you could walk afterward or even breathe. Parents waited fearfully every summer to see if it would strike. One case turned up and then another. The count began to climb. The city closed. [16]
Roberts contracted polio at the age of fourteen in 1953, two years before the Salk vaccine ended the epidemic. [1] He spent eighteen months in hospitals and returned home paralyzed from the neck down except for two fingers on one hand and several toes. He slept in an iron lung at night and often rested there during the day.
A doctor and professor explains how we have forgotten the contagious and painful symptoms of Polio.
Jonas Edward Salk (/ s ɔː l k /; born Jonas Salk; October 28, 1914 – June 23, 1995) was an American virologist and medical researcher who developed one of the first successful polio vaccines. He was born in New York City and attended the City College of New York and New York University School of Medicine .
The virus infects the throat and intestines, and can cause flu-like symptoms. Paralysis from the polio virus is rare. This year, polio cases have been detected in New York state, London and Jerusalem.
In the control group, Brodie reported that five out of 4500 developed polio; in the group receiving the vaccine, one out of 7,000 developed polio. This difference is not quite statistically significant, and other researchers believed that the one case was likely caused by the vaccine. Two more possible cases were reported later. [11]
In the 19th and 20th centuries, frequent polio outbreaks made it one of the most feared diseases in the US, with the biggest outbreak killing more than 3,000 people in 1952, according to US public ...