MY HERO JONAS SALK

If I had to pick my number one hero I would have no hesitation- it's Jonas Salk. That's a function of my age of course, because the younger generations have at best only a vague idea of who Dr. Salk was - maybe an elementary school is named after him and that's all they know. They have never seen an iron lung (Thank God) nor little children with huge braces and crutches. They didn't know know that our President couldn't walk and had to be lifted up and supported by two men if he ever changed his position. And they never lived through a summer of fear as we did in 1950.



We were young that summer, and had a little two year old. We lived in an apartment in Cincinnati on a block with other young couples - it was the first of the baby boom years. And polio struck that block with a vengeance. There were three cases on our block - two children and one young adult. He was a medical resident with small children himself and he had the most severe polio there could be. He was in an iron lung, which to my mind was the worst thing that could happen to you. The patient's lungs are paralyzed and they are unable to breathe outside of this iron coffin-like case over the whole body, with just a space for the face. We understood that the patient could never be out of the iron lung. I am sure they probably have better breathing apparatus now, but that was the way things were then.

That summer the whole city descended into fear. No one really knew where this horrible disease was coming from, or how it was spread. We were told that it was wise not to take children into crowds, to the movies, and in particular to swimming pools . We boiled our drinking water, we swatted flies and mosquitoes, we kept everyone in the house and we worried. It was hoped that when the cold weather came to Cincinnati that the epidemic would slow. It was a terrible summer.

There was a glimmering of hope on the horizon. The whole country was concentrating on a vaccine to put an end to this plague because, remember, it was aimed primarily at our children and there seemed to be no treatment, or cure. Finally the efforts of two doctors broke through- Dr. Albert Sabin with a vaccine concocted from live polio virus, and Jonas Salk with a vaccine made of a killed polio strain. They worked! Swiftly an immense population received ( I think, sugar cubes) coated with the magic. The plague ended, leaving the wounded ones behind. **

Here is the part you may not believe. Jonas Salk did not patent his miracle vaccine, the way he could have profited financially from his work. When asked why he acted so unselfishly he said , "Can you patent the sun?" Incredible, by today's standards. A hero for all time. Don't forget him.



** To show the incredible virulence of poliomyelitis, fifty years later some polio victims have been struck by something called "post-polio syndrome" in which they are invadeds again with another re-run of polio symptoms. No one knows why this final cruelty occurs, although some believe that the attenuated virus still exists in the bodies of these victims.