"No single event impressed me more than what happened on April 12, 1955, the day the results of the evaluation of the 1954 poliomyelitis vaccine field trials were announced. As I was making my rounds that afternoon, I was taken aback to find a banner stuck on the doors of the respirator wards that read: 'POLIO VACCINE WORKS.' The patients had asked the volunteers, who published an in house newsletter entitled 'The Toomeyville Gazette,' to spread the good news."
Robert M. Eiben, MD; 1955; Toomey Pavilion, Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio
Polio. Once one of the most feared of diseases, today...
Tag Archives: Epidemic
The recent outbreak of measles at Disneyland has spurred a rash of competing newscast, blog posts, and social media responses. One question continues to be foremost--as quoted by CNN correspondent Mariano Castillo, "how bad is it?" Castillo reminds the reader: "to call the news surrounding vaccinations a "debate" is misleading. The scientific and medical consensus is clear: Vaccinations are safe, and they work." The question is not about efficacy but about consequences; parents may have a variety of reasons for not vaccinating their children, sometimes on the grounds of safety or mistrust of the vaccine. However, as pointed...
The recent outbreak of Ebola in parts of Africa–and the frightened posts and live-tweets that accompanied two infected health workers as they returned to the US–give us a glimpse not only of an epidemic’s power but of our private terrors. Self-preservation, fear of the unknown, and a desire to protect the boundaries of nations, persons, bodies and cells brings out the best and worst in us. History provides both sides; the uninfected locked up with the infected in 14th century plague houses, left to starve and suffer in the dark–or doctors like Cleveland’s Horace Ackley, who personally combated and...
Diphtheria (Corynebacterium diphtheriae), an acute bacterial infection spread by personal contact, was the most feared of all childhood diseases. Diphtheria may be documented back to ancient Egypt and Greece, but severe recurring outbreaks begin only after 1700. One of every ten children infected died from this disease. Symptoms ranged from severe sore throat to suffocation due to a 'false membrane' covering the larynx. The disease primarily affected children under the age of 5. Until treatment became widely available in the 1920s, the public viewed this disease as a death sentence.
In the 1880s Dr. Joseph O’Dwyer, a Cleveland native, developed...