Why I Don’t Have Polio

Houston Chronicle

Henry L. Hohl Elementary, April 1955: The first Houston-area students await the newly available Salk vaccine.

Needles aren’t fun, but they’re even less fun while wearing formalwear, like this group below.

Fox Photos/Getty Images

 

Houston Chronicle Archives, 1961

Just like little Casey Carl Vaughn above, I, too, received an injection of the vaccine as a youngster. I imagine that’s also why you don’t have polio. Unless you do.

Below you’ll see a free clinic offered by the Houston health department in May of 1961. Residents lined up at the Minimax Store, where volunteers doled out 50,000 inoculations in one week. Ain’t nobody got time for paralysis.

Houston 175

Albert Sabin provided a cheaper alternative to Salk’s vaccine, by adding drops of vaccine to sugar cubes. No injection necessary.

https://www.historyofvaccines.org/

This Houston nurse followed suit in 1962, adding drops of vaccine to sugar cubes.

Houston 175

But it was too little, too late for these polio-afflicted children in Philadelphia, shown way back in 1950 at a meeting with the chairman of the city’s March of Dimes organization. (Special Collections Research Center, Temple University Libraries). Sometimes timing is everything.

 

18 thoughts on “Why I Don’t Have Polio”

  1. The older I get the more I appreciate the times I lived. I had a friend that had polio as a child. He never let that define him. We were close for quite a while in our 20’s but eventually everything changes.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

      2. Ah, yes! I did read that one but of course there is no way I would have remembered his headstone since I didn’t know who he was then. His wife lived quite a long life! To think that post was nearly a year ago…

        Liked by 1 person

    1. Ha! That’s a good one. Coming from a person who has tried several forms of CBD, all completely useless, as well as a couple types of essential oil to humor friends, I think I’ll stick with my bleach and chemicals. I don’t want to irritate germs. I want to destroy them. I wonder if Goop has taken a hit during this time.

      Liked by 2 people

      Reply

Observation and Interpretation: