ABSTRACT
The families were seen during 1954-55, immediately prior to the full-scale introduction of the Salk anti-polio vaccine, when many facts and rumors were being circulated about the vaccine but when parents could not as yet procure it for their children. The illness is spinal paralytic poliomyelitis; the subjects are the members of fourteen urban families in which a child contracted the disease, was hospitalized for an extended period, and returned home—nearly always—with a physical handicap. Until the successful mass administration of the Salk anti-polio vaccine, in 1955, poliomyelitis enjoyed the infamous distinction of being the only remaining serious epidemic disease in the Western world. The summary concept of emergence is used in opposition to the more familiar sociological notion of inherence. Despite its oversanguine view of the family-hospital relationship, however, the functional approach, with its emphasis on the systemic properties of social structures, does point up certain gaps and doubtful a priori assumptions in the reformers' critique.
