When I was a child, my parents had friends whose son Roger had been stricken by polio. Roger survived, but he would wear a leg brace for the rest of his life. There were other kids in our small community who had been crippled, blinded, or died from polio.
Several polio epidemics occurred in the United States between 1948 and 1955. Hospitals had isolation wards. Children with polio often had trouble breathing and were placed in iron lungs.
Dr. Jonas Salk developed and tested a vaccine for polio in the 1950’s, which was released in 1955. In 1961 Dr. Albert Sabin developed an oral polio vaccine, and I remember getting that as a child. By 1994, polio had been eradicated in North and South America.
People my age have a weird round depression on our upper left arm from getting a smallpox vaccine as a child. Dr. Edward Jenner is credited with discovering that giving people the cowpox virus would protect them from smallpox, an incredibly deadly disease. This is considered the first vaccine.
Dr. Jenner, when he was an apprentice doctor in his teens, heard a dairymaid say, “I shall never have smallpox, for I have had cowpox. I shall never have an ugly pockmarked face.” In fact, it was a common belief that dairymaids were in some way protected from smallpox. Decades later, Jenner remembered that comment. In 1796 he found a dairymaid with cowpox lesions, scraped a lesion, and used it to inoculate a young boy. The boy was mildly ill for about ten days. Two months later, Jenner inoculated the boy with a smallpox lesion. No disease. (National Library of Medicine)
Before the vaccine, smallpox was considered one of the world’s deadliest diseases. Early European explorers brought this and other diseases to our continent, and these diseases, especially smallpox, are believed to have killed about 85-90% of the indigenous population of North and South America.
Due to an epidemic in Asia, about 300 million people died of smallpox in the 20th Century. After vaccinations were brought to these nations, the World Health Organization declared in 1980 that smallpox had been eradicated worldwide.
In the 1960’s vaccines were developed for measles (1963), mumps (1967), and rubella (1969). The measles, mumps and rubella vaccines were combined into the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine in the U.S. in 1971. More than 500,000 cases of measles occurred each year in the U.S. in the 20th century compared with 47 cases in 2023. About 162,000 cases of mumps occurred each year in the U.S. in the 20th century compared with 429 in 2023. About 47,000 rubella cases occurred each year in the U.S. in the 20th century compared with three cases in 2023.
Many Americans are no longer having their children vaccinated against these and other serious diseases. According to the CDC (Centers for Disease Control) so far this year there have been 1,319 confirmed cases of measles, including at least one in our area. Confirmed means verified by a medical professional. 92% of these were unvaccinated children. The other 8% had not had all their doses of the MMR vaccine. 13% of these cases resulted in hospitalization, and three deaths so far have been confirmed from this measles outbreak.
Vaccines help our bodies stop an infection before it starts. They protect us from serious diseases that can kill or create permanent complications. Next week we will look at more information about vaccines.