Summary Of Polio

Polio: An American Story describes a struggle to find a vaccine on polio through several researchers’ lives, and over the course of many years. The second thesis is the struggle between Salk and Sabin, two bitter rivals who had their own vaccine that they believed would cure polio. The author David M. Oshinsky, is describing how difficult it was to find the cure to a horrifying disease, which lasted from the Great Depression until the 1960’s. Oshinsky then writes about how foundations formed as fundraisers, to support polio research. Lastly, the author demonstrates how researchers were forced to back track on multiple occasions, to learn more about polio. Researchers were unable to identify what caused Polio to spread. It seemed to be more common in cleaner environments, unlike other diseases. Polio was found more often in the middle class rather than the poor. One reason that the polio virus was so difficult to discover, was because it wasn’t a bacteria and because most microscopes couldn’t detect the microbial agent. Another problem that created difficulties for scientists, was that the researchers couldn’t discover how the virus got

The letter talked about a man named Lewis Joseph, overcame a severe case of polio by swimming in warm and soothing waters in a small town originally called Bullochsville, that was later renamed Warm Springs. This intrigued Roosevelt and inspired him to take a trip to Warm Spring, Georgia. Once Roosevelt was there, he tested the water and it proved that he was able to move his body. The water however, didn’t cure polio. The reason it allowed movement was because it had a high concentration of calcium and magnesium in the water. This caused the water’s buoyance to increase, which in turn, allowed Polio victims to move more freely about in the water. Roosevelt experienced this and it gave him great