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From:         dwilson@MAX.MUHLBERG.EDU
To:           Multiple recipients of list POLIO 
Date:         Wed, 19 Jul 1995 10:06:45 -0400
Subject:      New Book on Polio
 
        I have just finished reading a new book about the polio epidemics and
those of us who survived.  The book is Tony Gould, _A Summer Plague:
Polio and its Survivors_. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995, $30.00.
        Tony Gould is an Englishman who had polio at age 20 while serving
in the British Army in Hong Kong.  His book combines a good synthesis of
scholarship on the rise and fall of the polio epidemics with accounts of
polio survivors.  The first two-thirds of the book traces the rise of
epidemic polio in the U.S. and, to a lesser extent, Britain, where polio
did not become epidemic until after WWII.  He recounts the story of the
1916 epidemic in New York, FDR's polio and the development of Warm
Springs and rehabilitation, and the story of the National Foundation for
Infantile Paralysis and the search for a vaccine.  The last third of the
book is given over to accounts of their experience by polio survivors in
England and the United States.  Some of these accounts are quite moving.
They recall some of the themes that have played out on this list: abuse,
abandonment, struggle against obstacles (human and physical), and the
return of weakness and fatigue with post-polio.
        It is an interesting and well-written account.  You may want your
own copy, or ask your local library to order it.
 
Daniel Wilson
Allentown, PA
dwilson@max.muhlberg.edu
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