Polio As A Deadly Disease - 1500 Words

Polio was a deadly disease that struck the United States hard with various epidemic breakouts throughout the country. There are many books written about the disease and how it was controlled. Polio is a well-researched topic in today’s medical world but in this book, Heather Green Wooten, takes it one step further. She placed the focus of the book in the south, a place where the disease struck almost last yet it claimed many lives. It specifies on the state of Texas. In addition to that, she combined the disease epidemic with the social and economic development of the state in the twentieth century. The book follows a well-organized chronological order stating by the early cases of polio and its spread. Then it talks about Franklin D†¦show more content†¦The purpose of the chapter is to provide the readers with some background information. Along with this, it also shows how panic overtook the American communities. The uncertainty of what the virus was or where it cam e from caused a paranoia in many cities. The initial reaction was to quarantine victims and keep them away from the general public. The spread of the epidemic from northern states to Texas is accredited, according to Wooten, by the mass immigration into Texas by residents of other states during the oil industry’s boom in Texas in the early twentieth century. This exposed many people to polio as they moved into cities and the coastal area of Texas became more and more urbanized. The high standards of American hygene made polio a death threat. The body did not have the ability of fighting a small dose of the disease as new born did when hygene in the country was not so clean. By not being exposed to the virus the body did not produce the adequate antibodies to fight it off. When it struck at a later age the body was defenseless and so the epidemic started. The result of the urbanization of Texas and the many polio outbreaks helped the area create many hospitals and lead the fig ht against polio. The book also highlights the life of Franklin D. Roosevelt, who also suffered of polio. Wooten describes how the president acquired the disease andShow MoreRelatedA Brief Look at Poliomyelitis1287 Words   |  5 PagesPolio or poliomyelitis is a viral infection that normally affects kids below the age of 5years old. This childhood killer disease has been around for my centuries. Polio was first discovered my Jacob Heine in 1840 and later identified by Karl Landsteiner as poliomyelitis caused by polio virus from the enteric family of viruses. The polio virus is acquired through oral-fecal transmission. The Latin name simply means grey matter, and it is meaning inflation. 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