Limit search to available items
Book Cover
E-book
Author Wooten, Heather Green, 1958-

Title The polio years in Texas : battling a terrifying unknown / Heather Green Wooten
Edition 1st ed
Published College Station [Tex.] : Texas A & M University Press, ©2009

Copies

Description 1 online resource (xiv, 248 pages) : illustrations, maps, music
Series UPCC book collections on Project MUSE
Contents The dawn of a crippling threat -- The Lone Star legacy : polio, Texas politics, and FDR -- Battling a terrifying unknown -- Giving the boot to polio -- Red bricks, white coats, and iron lungs -- Silencing the killer -- A story yet to finish
Summary From the 1930s to the 1950s, in response to the rising epidemic of paralytic poliomyelitis (polio), Texas researchers led a wave of discoveries in virology, rehabilitative therapies, and the modern intensive care unit that transformed the field nationally. The disease threatened the lives of children and adults in the United States, especially in the South, arousing the same kind of fear more recently associated with AIDS and other dread diseases. Houston and Harris County, Texas, had the second-highest rate of infection in the nation, and the rest of the Texas Gulf Coast was particularly hard-hit by this debilitating illness. At the time, little was known, but eventually the medical responses to polio changed the medical landscape forever. Polio also had a sweeping cultural and societal effect. It engendered fearful responses from parents trying to keep children safe from its ravages and an all-out public information blitz aimed at helping a frightened population protect itself. The disease exacted a very real toll on the families, friends, healthcare resources, and social fabric of those who contracted the disease and endured its acute, convalescent, and rehabilitation phases.?In The Polio Years in Texas, Heather Green Wooten draws on extensive archival research as well as interviews conducted over a five-year period with Texas polio survivors and their families. This is a detailed and intensely human account of not only the epidemics that swept Texas during the polio years, but also of the continuing aftermath of the disease for those who are still living with its effects.Public health and medical professionals, historians, and interested general readers will derive deep and lasting benefits from reading The Polio Years in Texas
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes Print version record
Subject Poliomyelitis -- Texas -- History -- 20th century
Poliomyelitis -- history -- Texas
Poliomyelitis -- therapy -- Texas
Disease Outbreaks -- history -- Texas
History, 20th Century -- Texas
Poliovirus -- Texas
Socioeconomic Factors -- Texas
Poliomyelitis -- history
Poliomyelitis -- therapy
Disease Outbreaks -- history
History, 20th Century
Poliovirus
Socioeconomic Factors
MEDICAL -- Forensic Medicine.
MEDICAL -- Preventive Medicine.
MEDICAL -- Public Health.
Poliomyelitis
SUBJECT Texas
Subject Texas
Genre/Form Electronic books
History
Form Electronic book
LC no. 2009010425
ISBN 9781603443579
1603443576