The Medical World
Polio patients were most vulnerable in the acute stage, when the virus was actively destroying the motor neurons that controlled the muscles connected to swallowing, breathing, and limb movement. Although there was, and is, no cure for polio, endangered lives could be saved. Doctors and nurses used technology, experience, and vigilance to keep patients alive until the infection ran its course, and recovery began.
- The poliovirus can destroy up to 60 percent of the motor neurons (which control muscle movement) before any symptoms of weakness or paralysis appear.
- Before Sister Kenny brought her controversial massage, exercise, and hot-pack treatment to the United States in 1940, the accepted treatment for polio was to immobilize patients with rigid splints and casts.
Adjustable fiber hand and forearm splint, for a child’s right arm
Adjustable fiber hand and forearm splint, for a child’s right arm
Breathing
As with other epidemic diseases, such as cholera and tuberculosis, polio brought fundamental changes to medical practice.
Plastic endotracheal tube is inserted through the mouth into the trachea to help a patient breath, 1982
Plastic endotracheal tube is inserted through the mouth into the trachea to help a patient breath, 1982
Modified vacuum cleaner and the cuirass, or portable respirator, that it pumped
Sister Kenny
Elizabeth Kenny, or Sister Kenny, as nurses were called in Australia, came to the United States in 1940. Her methods of hot-pack applications, stretching, and muscle massage were unconventional and controversial, but eventually became part of standard care for polio.
Surgery
The morning of my operation, I felt brave going in. While I was under anesthesia, the surgeons took out sections of bone from my arms and legs and put the pieces on my lower spine, where it curved. The curvature of my spine, called scoliosis, makes it hard for me to breathe and impossible to sit up straight. The surgeons also put an iron rod down my spine to straighten it, in hopes that I could sit up enough to use a wheelchair.
When I came out of surgery, seeing stars on the acoustic ceiling tiles, I wondered if I was dead. My right leg was in a cast, and I was in terrible pain; it felt as if the bones had been beaten to powder. Everything hurt, especially when I was lifted. Back in the little kids’ room, I felt miserable, and time passed very slowly.
Surgical staples, used to stop limb growth (epiphysiodesis) when one leg develops faster than the other
Courtesy of Tobin Siebers
