The Polio Years in Texas

From the 1930s to the 1950s, paralytic poliomyelitis ("polio") threatened the lives of children and adults in Texas, arousing the same kind of fear more recently associated with AIDS and other dread diseases. Harris County 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, though little was known at first, the medical responses to polio changed the medical landscape forever, giving rise to the development of rehabilitative therapies, the modern intensive care unit, and a wave of discoveries in virology that transformed the field.

Heather Green Wooten earned her PhD in medical humanities from the University of Texas Medical Brawnch at Galveston. She is an educator and independent historian living in League City, Texas.