ABSTRACT
Some paralysis was so severe that children had to be placed in large metal machines just to keep them breathing. Cities dosed their swimming pools and movie theaters. Parents warned children not to eat summer fruits like peaches or cherries for fear the germs were on the fruit. Many of the children spent the rest of their lives in wheelchairs or in heavy leg braces. In 1935, a research scientist at New York University used ground-up monkey spinal cords that had been infected with the polio virus to develop a vaccine. The vaccine was released to the public in 1955 and was declared safe and effective. The rest of America quickly rolled up their sleeves and took the Salk cure. Polio cases dropped dramatically from 58,000 annual cases to just 5,600.
