Ep. 74 Polio: Why a Disease Existing Since Ancient Times Took Millennia to Become a Problem

Polio has been around since ancient times but it was a very quiet disease for most of history, affecting few people and raising little alarm. It wasn’t until the 20th century that polio began to appear among the masses, terrifying epidemics, a mysterious disease that seemed to target children out of nowhere, paralyzing them, killing them. No one knew how it spread. No one knew how to treat it. No one knew how to stop it. They quarantined. They avoided swimming pools and water fountains. They lived in fear. But the strange thing was, these polio epidemics were only happening in developed countries, countries that had recently gone to great lengths to ensure improved hygiene and sanitation. Good hygiene, cleanliness, was supposed to prevent the spread of disease. How had it backfired so horrifically with polio? Let’s fix that.

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Sources: 

• Yale Medicine Magazine "Breaking the back of polio" 
• Wikipedia "History of Polio"
• Encyclopedia Britannica "Polio through history"
• PBS "Candy Land"
• BBC "The man in the iron lung"
• World Health Organization "History of the Polio Vaccine"
• Mayo Clinic "Polio"
• CDC "Covid-19 Mortality Update"