The mediation of childhood health during the polio era in Australia

This chapter examines the mediation of childhood polio in Australian media outlets in the 1930s–1950s. The mid-20th-century polio era is analysed against the broader context of an expanding welfare state, in which education, medicine and hospitals were positioned to manage the health of children. This entailed a combination of simple public health strategies for schools, modern medical interventions and, crucially, a positive attitudinal orientation to the future. A set of mass media images of children with polio or recovered from polio are used to illustrate how the bodily effects of polio were understood through discourses of deficit, in which overcoming these and achieving able-bodiedness was a central aim.