My Gift of Polio
My Gift of Polio

Author: James Murray

Publisher:

Published: 2018-04-17

Total Pages: 522

ISBN-13: 9781980559795

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James Murray was the youngest of six children born into a poor working-class family in Moffat, a very small isolated town in rural Scotland, during the Depression of the early 1930s. He caught polio as a baby and his future looked bleak. This profusely illustrated memoir describes his early years growing up in poverty and follows his serendipitous life beyond - taking him from degrees at the University of St. Andrews to international renown in the world of academia at Harvard, Oxford, Paris and other universities around the world. Murray describes his involvement as an Advisory Director with the founding problems of the Arvon Foundation in Britain. Murray's groundbreaking scientific research was a new field of mathematics of genuine use in the real world, which he applied to brain tumours, divorce prediction and many other areas. Aspects of this research are described in a non-technical way alongside other descriptions of his many other diverse skills, enthusiasms, and friendships such as those with Leonard Baskin, Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes including some unpublished poems.

Polio
Polio

Author: Thomas Abraham

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2018-09-01

Total Pages: 350

ISBN-13: 1787380874

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In 1988, the World Health Organization launched a twelve-year campaign to wipe out polio. Thirty years and several billion dollars over budget later, the campaign grinds on, vaccinating millions of children and hoping that each new year might see an end to the disease. But success remains elusive, against a surprisingly resilient virus, an unexpectedly weak vaccine and the vagaries of global politics, meeting with indifference from governments and populations alike. How did an innocuous campaign to rid the world of a crippling disease become a hostage of geopolitics? Why do parents refuse to vaccinate their children against polio? And why have poorly paid door-to-door healthworkers been assassinated? Thomas Abraham reports on the ground in search of answers.

Polio and Its Aftermath
Polio and Its Aftermath

Author: Marc Shell

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2009-06-30

Total Pages: 335

ISBN-13: 0674043545

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In this book, Shell, himself a victim of polio, offers an inspired analysis of the disease. Part memoir, part cultural criticism and history, part meditation on the meaning of disease, Shell's work combines the understanding of a medical researcher with the sensitivity of a literary critic. He deftly draws a detailed yet broad picture of the lived experience of a crippling disease as it makes it way into every facet of human existence.

Limping through Life
Limping through Life

Author: Jerry Apps

Publisher: Wisconsin Historical Society

Published: 2013-04-24

Total Pages: 249

ISBN-13: 0870205870

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Limping through Life A Farm Boy’s Polio Memoir Jerry Apps “Families throughout the United States lived in fear of polio throughout the late 1940s and early 1950s, and now the disease had come to our farm. I can still remember that short winter day and the chilly night when I first showed symptoms. My life would never be the same.” —from the Introduction Polio was epidemic in the United States starting in 1916. By the 1930s, quarantines and school closings were becoming common, as isolation was one of the only ways to fight the disease. The Sauk vaccine was not available until 1955; in that year, Wisconsin’s Fox River valley had more polio cases per capita than anywhere in the United States. In his most personal book, Jerry Apps, who contracted polio at age twelve, reveals how the disease affected him physically and emotionally, profoundly influencing his education, military service, and family life and setting him on the path to becoming a professional writer. A hardworking farm kid who loved playing softball, young Jerry Apps would have to make many adjustments and meet many challenges after that winter night he was stricken with a debilitating, sometimes fatal illness. In Limping through Life he explores the ways his world changed after polio and pays tribute to those family members, teachers, and friends who helped him along the way.

Polio Wars
Polio Wars

Author: Naomi Rogers

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 489

ISBN-13: 0195380592

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A study of Australian nurse Sister Elizabeth Kenny and her efforts to have her unorthodox methods of treating polio accepted as mainstream polio care in the United States during the 1940s. A case study of changing clinical care, and an examination of the hidden politics of philanthropies and medical societies.

Small Steps
Small Steps

Author: Peg Kehret

Publisher: Albert Whitman & Company

Published: 1996-01-01

Total Pages: 145

ISBN-13: 0807574600

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1996 Golden Kite Award for Nonfiction 1997 ALA Notable Books for Children 1997 Top Ten Quick Picks for Reluctant Young Readers 1997 Pen Center USA West Literary Award 1998 Dorothy Canfield Fisher Book Award (Vermont) 1998-1999 Mark Twain Award (Missouri) 1998 Joan Fassler Memorial Book Award 1998-1999 Texas Bluebonnet Award, Runner-Up 1998-1999 William Allen White Master Reading List (Kansas) 1998-1999 Pennsylvania Young Readers' Choice Award Master List 1998-1999 Sequoyah Book Award Master List (Oklahoma) 1998-1999 Volunteer State Book Award Master List (Tennessee) 1998-1999 NH Great Stone Face Children's Book Award Master List 1999 Sasquatch Reading Award Master List (Washington State) 2000-2001 Iowa Children's Choice Awards Master List 2001 Rebecca Caudill Young Readers' Book Award Master List (Illinois) 2001 Young Hoosier Book Award 2015 Bluestem Book Award Master List In a riveting story of courage and hope, Peg Kehret writes about months spent in a hospital when she was twelve, first struggling to survive a severe case of polio, then slowly learning to walk again. Peg Kehret was stricken with polio when she was twelve years old. At first paralyzed and terrified, she fought her way to recovery, aided by doctors and therapists, a loving family, supportive roommates fighting their own battles with the disease, and plenty of grit and luck. With the humor and suspense that are her trademarks, acclaimed author Peg Kehret vividly recreates the true story of her year of heartbreak and triumph.

The Polio Journals
The Polio Journals

Author: Anne K. Gross

Publisher: Rj Communications

Published: 2011-01

Total Pages: 275

ISBN-13: 9780578065915

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Description: Part memoir, part social commentary, The Polio Journals tells the story of Carol Rosenstiel, who contracted the disease in 1927 at the age of two, leaving her permanently paralyzed from the waist down.In the 1920s, society viewed polio as a shameful reflection of the dirty lifestyle of its victims, leading Carol's parents to silence all issues related to their daughter's disability. Pushed by her parents to be exceptional in order to make up for her impairment, Carol became a successful musician, married, and raised two children. Prior to her death in 1985, she broke her silence and poured out her memories in a series of diaries. The Polio Journals explores Carol's inspiring life, probes the changing cultural landscape that impacted her lifelong quest to be accepted by others, and examines the havoc wreaked on families by silencing that which causes shame. From a historical perspective, the book allows readers to see how attitudes toward individuals with disabilities have changed over time.About The Author: Anne K. Gross, Ph.D., received her doctorate in clinical psychology from Duke University, after which she dedicated her career to the treatment of individuals with disabilities and chronic illnesses. Although she now writes full time, her past professional positions include assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center and regional consultant for the Social Security Disability program. She has published over a dozen articles in professional psychology journals as well as essays and editorials in the Denver Post and New Mobility magazine. She and her husband live in Colorado and have two daughters.

The Man He Became
The Man He Became

Author: James Tobin

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2013-11-12

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 1451698674

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Here, from James Tobin, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in biography, is the story of the greatest comeback in American political history, a saga long buried in half-truth, distortion, and myth—Franklin Roosevelt’s ten-year climb from paralysis to the White House. In 1921, at the age of thirty-nine, Roosevelt was the brightest young star in the Democratic Party. One day he was racing his children around their summer home. Two days later he could not stand up. Hopes of a quick recovery faded fast. “He’s through,” said allies and enemies alike. Even his family and close friends misjudged their man, as they and the nation would learn in time. With a painstaking reexamination of original documents, James Tobin uncovers the twisted chain of accidents that left FDR paralyzed; he reveals how polio recast Roosevelt’s fateful partnership with his wife, Eleanor; and he shows that FDR’s true victory was not over paralysis but over the ancient stigma attached to the disabled. Tobin also explodes the conventional wisdom of recent years—that FDR deceived the public about his condition. In fact, Roosevelt and his chief aide, Louis Howe, understood that only by displaying himself as a man who had come back from a knockout punch could FDR erase the perception that had followed him from childhood—that he was a pampered, too smooth pretty boy without the strength to lead the nation. As Tobin persuasively argues, FDR became president less in spite of polio than because of polio. The Man He Became affirms that true character emerges only in crisis and that in the shaping of this great American leader character was all.

The Polio Years in Texas
The Polio Years in Texas

Author: Heather Green Wooten

Publisher: Texas A&M University Press

Published: 2009-10-25

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 9781603441650

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From the 1930s to the 1950s, in response to the rising epidemic of paralytic poliomyelitis (polio), Texas researchers led a wave of discoveries in virology, rehabilitative therapies, and the modern intensive care unit that transformed the field nationally. The disease threatened the lives of children and adults in the United States, especially in the South, arousing the same kind of fear more recently associated with AIDS and other dread diseases. Houston and Harris County, Texas, had the second-highest rate of infection in the nation, and the rest of the Texas Gulf Coast was particularly hard-hit by this debilitating illness. At the time, little was known, but eventually the medical responses to polio changed the medical landscape forever. Polio also had a sweeping cultural and societal effect. It engendered fearful responses from parents trying to keep children safe from its ravages and an all-out public information blitz aimed at helping a frightened population protect itself. The disease exacted a very real toll on the families, friends, healthcare resources, and social fabric of those who contracted the disease and endured its acute, convalescent, and rehabilitation phases. In The Polio Years in Texas, Heather Green Wooten draws on extensive archival research as well as interviews conducted over a five-year period with Texas polio survivors and their families. This is a detailed and intensely human account of not only the epidemics that swept Texas during the polio years, but also of the continuing aftermath of the disease for those who are still living with its effects. Public health and medical professionals, historians, and interested general readers will derive deep and lasting benefits from reading The Polio Years in Texas.

Splendid Solution
Splendid Solution

Author: Jeffrey Kluger

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2006-02-07

Total Pages: 385

ISBN-13: 1440684650

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The compelling true story of Dr. Jonas Salk's quest to develop a vaccine for polio. In 1916, the United States was hit with one of the worst polio epidemics in history. The disease was a terrifying enigma: striking out of nowhere, it afflicted tens of thousands of children and left them—literally overnight—paralyzed. Others it simply killed. At the same time, a child named Jonas Salk was born.... When Franklin Delano Roosevelt was diagnosed with polio shortly before assuming the Presidency, Salk was given an impetus to study this deadly illness. After assisting in the creation of an influenza vaccine, Salk took up the challenge. His progress in combating the virus was hindered by the politics of medicine and by a rival researcher determined to discredit his proposed solution. But Salk's perseverance made history—and for close to seventy years his vaccine has saved countless lives, bringing humanity close to eradicating polio throughout the world. Splendid Solution chronicles Dr. Salk's race against time to achieve an unparalleled breakthrough that made him a cultural hero and icon of modern medicine.