Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Sawbones: Polio

Episode Date: April 29, 2015

This week on Sawbones, in the last of their three-part series, Dr. Sydnee and Justin explore the dark and light side of swimming pools as they present the triumph over polio. Music: "Medicines" by The... Taxpayers (http://thetaxpayers.net)

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Saabones is a show about medical history, and nothing the hosts say should be taken as medical advice or opinion. It's for fun. Can't you just have fun for an hour and not try to diagnose your mystery boil? We think you've earned it. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy a moment of distraction from that weird growth. You're worth it. that weird growth. You're worth it. Alright, time is about to books. One, two, one, two, three, four. We came across a pharmacy with a toy and that's lost it out. We were shot through the broken glass and had ourselves a look around.
Starting point is 00:00:56 Some medicines, some medicines, the escalant macaque for the mouth. Wow! Hello everybody, welcome to Saw Bones, Madele tour. Missided medicine. I'm your co-host just macaroid I'm Sydney Macroid said I am getting excited the high today is 70 and it's gonna be in the 80s to the weekend and you know what that means You're gonna wear those shorts that I love all you gonna see those cute calves that I love. And I'm gonna see those cute calves. Can you see those get away sticks? I love those calves. I can't get enough of them.
Starting point is 00:01:28 That also means I'm gonna get out to the pool, Sid. All right, I like that plan. Then get my goggles on. I'm gonna throw a change to the bottom pool and go get it. I'm gonna work on my base tan. I'm not gonna let you do that part. No, I'm not gonna do that part.
Starting point is 00:01:42 But carry on, that's okay. Well, we'll do other things. Everything, like all that stuff's in. I'll, I'm gonna just swim around. Well, you know, something else you could do. What's that? If you had polio, you could do some hydrotherapy while you're in there.
Starting point is 00:01:58 Okay, well, I mean, that is definitely not one of the usual things that I think of when pool time fun is on the menu. But I'm just trying to think of all the things you can do in the water, you know, just. Well, pee, okay, there, there's my, there's my thing. Do you pee in the pool? Do you treat your polio in the pool?
Starting point is 00:02:18 Well, I don't have polio. Okay, well, I don't have pee. So I guess we're even. You don't have pee? What is that? That's a much bigger problem. Can I tell you something Sydney? Hold on. Wait, do you not pee because we need to back up and address. Can I tell you something? I don't know what polio is. Well, that's okay, Justin because I'm gonna tell you all about it. Okay. And then you're gonna know what it is by the end of this
Starting point is 00:02:37 episode. That's the way it works, baby. Okay. And by the way, can I just say do you know why you don't know why what polio is? Why? Vaccinesio is? Why? Vaccines. But we'll get more to that later. I want to thank a few people who recommended this topic. First of all, Nicole, Megan, Jennifer, and Jessica, I'll recommend this. And Emma. Emma wrote us an email recommending polio.
Starting point is 00:03:00 Emma is 13 and she read a book about it and she thought it would be interesting for us to talk about. And she also said Justin that your goofs have helped her make friends. If you can believe it, your goofs. So fun, that's so funny that when I was in school, it worked literally the exact 100% opposite way. So I'm glad to hear that's working out for you. Also, I'm so excited to send me a woman
Starting point is 00:03:25 to listen into the program. Yeah, absolutely. And I'm interested in poly. Getting those STEM fields, ladies. Get up in there. So, polio said, what is it? So polio is a disease that's been around a really long time. It dates back to antiquity.
Starting point is 00:03:40 And the reason we know that is because we read descriptions like from the ancient Egyptians and see hieroglyphs of people, especially children, who have a withered limb or who are using some sort of like assistive device for walking a cane or a crutch or something or a description of some sort of infantile paralysis is what it was often kind of referred to. So we can deduce from that that polio's been around a long time, but nobody really knew what it was. You know, we just, somebody would get really sick
Starting point is 00:04:10 and some people may end up paralyzed and then it didn't happen for a while and so nobody thought about it because it was mainly sporadic cases. Polio's interesting when we really think about big outbreaks of polio, the stuff that makes us scared, why we, even if you don't know much about polio, you kind of know that's something to be scared
Starting point is 00:04:28 of, is really from the 1900s on. That's when we start seeing the big epidemics that we kind of talk about. So relatively new in the popular conscience. Exactly. It's thought as we look back into history, probably consciousness, probably consciousness, probably not our conscience. It is thought that the Roman Emperor Claudius had polio. There are some descriptions of him walking with a withered leg and that he probably survived polio. And Sir Walter Scott, famously, also had polio in 1773, he lost the use of
Starting point is 00:05:00 one leg. And this, this was a lot of, this inspired a lot of his work and, and his life, and it was a big turning point for him. It was interesting when Sir Walter Scott got it, it was referred to as a severe teething fever, which, if you remember from our teething episode, harkens to the fact that at the time, many childhood illnesses were blamed on teething. Right. This is why we ended up doing weird stuff like cutting gums till the teeth come through. Exactly.
Starting point is 00:05:30 And it was really just a timing thing. At the same time, kids were cutting teeth is the same time they happen to be susceptible to these kinds of diseases. And so it was thought that he got polio because of his TV. And again, it was thought many kids who got polio may have been related to teething. I bet that's not even right No, you do not get polio from teething boom, which is good Charlie's teething right now It's good no polio there. No, and we didn't sleep much last night on the flip side because I was so worried about polio But now I don't have to worry about that anymore. I meant because Charlie's teething, but right, okay
Starting point is 00:06:04 Tiny Tim probably had polio. Well, I mean, okay, no. You know that that's not like an autobiography, right? That probably he did. I mean, we don't know. I mean, there wasn't. He lived so long ago. You can't really tell.
Starting point is 00:06:18 If he had polio or not. Well, gosh, gosh, you know. But he probably did. He didn't, he might have had scurvy. Like, we have no idea. It doesn't mean he's since. There's no, there's not a historical account. He didn't have scurvy though. He probably had polio. Okay. Fine. The description of Dickens' description of Tiny Tim probably in today's medical world, we would say he had polio. That was probably what he had survived, why he walked with a crutch, and why he was still sick.
Starting point is 00:06:46 clinically pure spirit and Heart is big all is all outdoors, and that's what's causing his problems. It's a scientific diagnosis that he's just too sweet for this world. No, I mean no, he probably had polio. Okay. Well, okay, fine. So like I said, we see these kind of random descriptions of polio throughout history, but then there weren't big epidemics, not until we get into the 1900s, and this is when we start seeing multiple cases of what becomes known as polio popping up throughout Europe in the US and clustered. So not just one one kid who gets sick and and may end up with paralysis,
Starting point is 00:07:26 we see lots of kids in the same area who get sick. So it starts off in the early 1900s with some clusters of cases in Louisiana. There's some scares in New York, large I mean big population center. Abolation dense areas, yeah. Boston. But it isn't until the summer of 1916 that we really, polio really declares itself as such a public health threat. So up to that point, that was the largest outbreak in the US, and especially in New York City. There was a huge number of cases and deaths in New York City. There were over, there were 27,000 cases that summer. There were 6,000 deaths and 2,000 of those alone were in New York.
Starting point is 00:08:06 Now, when I say, this doesn't sound like like giant numbers when we think about the other illnesses we've talked about, right? We talked about the plague, we talked about smallpox. These numbers are very small compared to the kind of devastation that those illnesses cause. But you have to consider that it was striking kids. Kids were largely the people who were affected. So that's going to amp up the scaryness of any disease. Exactly. And this was a disease that it knew no class boundaries. It didn't matter how affluent you were. Everybody was susceptible. And they didn't know why.
Starting point is 00:08:45 They knew it came in the summer. We started to figure that out. We had more outbreaks in the summer. But why, what was the cause in the summer? There was some thought that it was related to water, which was not a bad thought. But as a result, pools were closed. Amusement parks were closed down. Oh, no, not pools.
Starting point is 00:09:04 They answered. They answered a curiopolios, amusement parks were closed down. Oh, no, not pools. The answer, the answer to cure your polio is right in front of your face. It said, you just stay in the pool, keep swimming. Well, no, okay, no, hold on. The one tree doesn't cure polio. The treatment for polio. No, wait, no. You close it. Okay.
Starting point is 00:09:18 You maniacs. No. See, you don't know, no, don't say this thing. But no, at the time, pools probably were a way of spreading. No, they certainly were. I should say probably. They definitely were a way of spreading polio. We'll talk a little bit about the polio virus and I'll explain why.
Starting point is 00:09:34 But pools were closed, amusement parks were closed, beaches were closed. Everybody stayed away from public water fountains with a thought that if it had something to do with water, let's just stay away from water. People scattered from New York City, especially that summer of 1916, they just fled to all the mountains and surrounding areas to just to try to get away, to go hide in their, you know, I don't know, their log cabins, wherever people go hide from disease. Yeah. This has happened a couple times on our show where there are a bunch of people in New York City and then they all flee to other places.
Starting point is 00:10:09 Uh, yeah, it's an odd phenomenon. You know, that's actually the only reason that people live in New Jersey. That's true. New Jersey was founded by people running from polio. Right. Running from diseases in New York. They cross the state line, they're like, ah, thank goodness.
Starting point is 00:10:29 The polio here. Do you were making so many people new to your senior ad right now? It's a fine, there are much more ignoble ways for your state to start than people who were trying to get away from polio. Like, there's no argument there. I mean, I think all things being equal,
Starting point is 00:10:44 our state probably had a better origin, just saying. Yeah, I hate it, it's no argument there. I mean, I think all things being equal, our state probably had a better origin, just saying. Yeah, I hate to slay race that much. Yeah, so we joined the North, and we like, we're doing it for Virginia. But like, that poll, That's old dominion. That pollio thing is cool too. Yeah, that, I'm okay.
Starting point is 00:10:57 Not pollio, it's not, you know what I mean. Yeah, that's not real, but it is a fun, we'll go with that. It's a fun story. Justin's alternative history. Yeah. Okay. If you had someone in your home that had polio,
Starting point is 00:11:10 your name and address was gonna be published in the paper. Oh, no. Yes. So that you would know who had polio and where they lived and stay away from them. Oh, no. The people were quarantined in their homes with the, you know,
Starting point is 00:11:25 whoever had polio within their family. And there were signs that were put on the window, in the windows, like a little sign that you had to put up, that the cardboard placards that said someone in this home has polio. So, kind of like publishers clearing house, or rather than bringing you an oversized chat, they're bringing you wood to board up your home, so you're stuck there. Exactly. And if you and if you took the sign down or tried to evade the authorities, they would, I think they were just fine knew, I don't think they were throwing you in jail,
Starting point is 00:11:51 but they took it very seriously. Nobody understood how to avoid polio, so they just kind of locked away anybody who had it. And this was the norm for decades of summers. And this is something I don't think we appreciate now that for it was just accepted that summers coming, it's, our kids are gonna want to swim in the pool. But there's this thing that sometimes kids get
Starting point is 00:12:16 and they might get paralyzed and they might die. So we don't know how to stop it. We don't know what it's linked to. Well, that's gotta put a damper on the end of the school year excitement, right? Hey, Ricky, are you excited about schooling? Yeah, I'm pretty pumped. I just hope I don't get polio. You know, this would be a really, this would be a really good thing.
Starting point is 00:12:40 I like to encourage people to talk to their grandparents because I don't think people appreciate in our in our our culture the elderly enough. Lesson, yeah, must have been terrifying. Talk to your grandparents about this. I bet that there are some wild things that I don't even know about because they're not in books and they're not easily accessible that they could tell you about living in this time period and what it was like to grow up with this fear. Send us your polio stories. So that was a maximum fun that org.
Starting point is 00:13:07 Let us know, because I bet your grandma and grandpa have some great stories. I don't get a second hand from somebody else's grandma and grandpa, I want that straight from the source ish. No, go visit them. Go to your grandma and grandpa's house. They're happy to hear from you. They'll probably get your favorite food or soda
Starting point is 00:13:23 or whatever breakfast treat and get it for you and give it to you And then they'll tell you stories about polio and it will be fascinating. Why not is this diet cheer one? How thoughtful Did you have some stories about polio you'd like to share? So let's talk about what polio is because we haven't covered that. Yeah, I'm still kind of wondering Okay, so I wanted to build the fear of it before I tell you what it is I'm still kind of wondering. Okay, so I wanted to build the fear of it before I tell you what it is. Okay, I'm terrified.
Starting point is 00:13:45 Okay, good, because that's the world, all these poor people were living in. They didn't know any of this, this answer yet. So polio is a virus, it's an inner of virus. And the reason that I said swimming pools, avoiding swimming pools was probably a good idea is that it spread through what we call the fecal oral route, which yes, that's as gross as it sounds.
Starting point is 00:14:06 Nice. It's shed through the GI track, meaning that it can come out your butt. It is something that you could spread from your throat, although that normally wasn't the way that it spread. I'm suddenly very stoked that the only public pool in Huntington has now been paved over. Yes, because public pools were definitely a place where it could spread and it took a while to incubate, so up to 20 days, so you didn't necessarily know where you got it or how you got it or who gave it to you when you started having symptoms.
Starting point is 00:14:35 Now the thing most people know about polio, if you know anything, is something about paralysis and something about an iron lung, but what you don't know is that in 95% of cases, you probably don't know you have it. Really? No. Most of the time polio is not as dangerous as what we, you know, in popular culture have come to accept. Most of the time your body will fight it off on its own. You can give it to other people though. Is it one of those where it continues to lie dormant inside you or are you just clear it? You're just okay. Yeah, you just, you got it. It's over the whole time you were infectious though.
Starting point is 00:15:12 That's one scary thing is that you can, even if you didn't have symptoms, you could give it to other people. In about 4% of cases, you do get some symptoms from polio, but it's mainly just what we call upper respiratory symptoms, you know, cough, running nose, sore throat, that kind of thing. You may get some stomach symptoms, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, which of course was worse for spreading it. And you may even get some flu-like symptoms and feel kind of lousy, but then it will go away, usually. So we're really getting
Starting point is 00:15:42 down to about one percent of cases when the virus will invade the central nervous system and that's what we think about when we think about polio. People who actually had the virus invade their central nervous system and then they can get paralysis of one limb, several limbs or in the worst case scenario is complete paralysis which often times then would lead to death. And as I said, it's highly, highly infectious. If one person in your family had polio, it was likely that everyone in that household was going to get polio. But I imagine that this started to get better as like we made sanitation better, right? This is a weird case where as sanitation improved, this is actually probably why we
Starting point is 00:16:26 see the big outbreaks and why as time goes on it from the from the first outbreak in 1916 to the worst of them in the 1950s, as we move forward, the outbreaks get more deadly because improved sanitation meant that the age that people were getting polio started getting older. Now this is interesting about polio. Most cases initially were among infants and they actually had a lower incidence of causing paralysis in infants. Babies were more likely to get it, get sick, and then get better. As you get older, if you get polio as you're older, if you're, you know, five years old, nine years old, 15 years older, greater, you're more likely to get the paralysis or die from polio. So as we had improved sanitation, babies were exposed to less illnesses.
Starting point is 00:17:20 You know, they just weren't, they weren't as germy. And so they were cleaner. So they didn't get polio. You didn't get polio until you were out in the world exposed to things. So we see the age of incidence increasing from like six months to four years old was normal to five to nine years. And then we see a lot of cases over the age of 15. And this is where we really start seeing
Starting point is 00:17:40 how deadly polio can be, because it's these older people who are getting it that have all of the really devastating consequences. So Sid, I'm terrified. How do we fix it? Fix it. Fix polio. Well, I'm going to fix polio for you, but before I do that, I'm going to need you to head
Starting point is 00:17:55 with me to the billing department. Let's go. Okay. So, cure polio. All right. So, it's 1952. that I skill it my God for the mouth. Okay, so, cure polio. All right, so it's 1952 and we're in the worst out break so far in the US. There are over 57,000 cases, over 3,000 deaths, over 21,000 people are left paralyzed
Starting point is 00:18:19 as the result of this. Yikes. And, you know, in general nobody knew what to do. And as I said, as the age of incident starts increasing, the population becomes less immune because people aren't getting it as early. So then it becomes more devastating. So basically, this was a situation where we didn't know what to do. So we tried everything, right? One popular treatment for a while was to apply electricity to the legs. Kind of a little wake up. Like a little electric pinch. I like to call that the Dr. Frankenstein treatment.
Starting point is 00:18:48 Come on, legs. Just wake up. Wake up. The more legs. That's not exactly how nerves work. Nope. I like the effort. I like the thought.
Starting point is 00:18:59 I like the ingenuity, the vim, the vigor. I'm into it, but it just doesn't work like that. There were almond meal baths. just take a bath and almond meal sounds I don't know fragrant pleasant. Relaxing yeah I but that doesn't it doesn't help with polio. There was a there was a poultice recipe that was very popular it included among other things I had many many ingredients but some of the best rum and camameal slippery elm and mustard. Among other things, I have many, many ingredients, but some of the best, Roman, Camamil, slippery, Elm, and mustard.
Starting point is 00:19:25 Hmm, less, less fragrant. Less, less fragrant, less, even less helpful. So I would say. I would cite more of an olfactory challenge, I would say. But I do, I always appreciate a good poultice. Sure, love poultice. Why not? Love a poultice.
Starting point is 00:19:40 There were several things that we attempted to do as like an oral medication to give somebody by mouth. So take quinine, we'd figured out that it worked from malaria. So Why not sure it seems to be good Not no don't do that caffeine was given I don't know if that was on the basis that hey wake up legs. Yeah Body doesn't work. I will Java. Yeah, this will wake them up legs. Yeah. The electricity in the world. Body doesn't work. I will.
Starting point is 00:20:03 I will. Java. Yeah, this will wake them up. Radiant water, we've talked about this before, radiation, like the idea of some sort of irradiated compound giving you medical therapy, like that was really popular. So you would drink this water that usually had like the tiniest, we're talking like, like, homeopathic doses of a radium in it or was it an irradiated pot or something? Okay, so this did nothing. Gold was thought to be a treatment. Which, I mean, if you're just guessing, that seems like a really expensive thing to guess. Yeah, I would start with like, PyRite and see how that goes. Maybe go up to bronze.
Starting point is 00:20:41 Absolutely. That's the generic that you can buy. Like, the brand name is gold, but then you get PyRite when it goes generic. That's not true. Most generic drugs are pretty much the same thing as the brand name. Just, yeah, just don't, don't forget about that. Um, over the next 40 years, as we, you know, through, from 1916 to the 1950s, when we finally get to like an actual way to stop polio, um. The one of the most employed treatments was hydrotherapy that I alluded to in the beginning. We've talked a little bit about hydrotherapy before. The idea that water intrinsically heals you is basically what hydrotherapy is thought to be, you know, that if you just get in water or drink water or do it a water in a
Starting point is 00:21:22 ma or in some way interact with water, it will fix whatever is wrong with you. Well, that's not true, right? Right. Like we know that. But this was at a time where the best that we did for polio patients was to essentially cast them, cast them as in put them in casts, or brace them until they couldn't move. What in? The thought was that because your limbs would become withered, that if you could hold the
Starting point is 00:21:51 limb in the right position, that this, you wouldn't develop like, there are things contractures as like a limb kind of, it flexes or bends on its own, you know. And the thought was that if we just strapped you to a board or casted you so you couldn't move, these things wouldn't happen. And the nerves was that if we just strapped you to a board or casted you so you couldn't move these things wouldn't happen. And the nerves would fix themselves. So we this was in a time period where the the common treatment for a polio patient was to strap them to a board essentially for months at a time. So you just be stuck in your house for eight months, strap to something or cast it in your full body in an attempt to fix things. or casted in your full body in an attempt to fix things. And all that was happening this entire time is that your muscles were atrophine, both
Starting point is 00:22:27 the muscles that were affected by the polio, and then all the other muscles that maybe weren't were affected by the casting itself, and then you lost any strength you may have had. So, with that in mind, hydrotherapy was actually a pretty decent idea. It was mainly popularized by FDR. Oh, sure, yeah, he had polio. Probably. There's actually some thought now that maybe he didn't,
Starting point is 00:22:52 that maybe he had Guillain-Barre syndrome. What? Yes, but I think that let's go ahead and go with the idea that maybe he did have polio because of all he did for polio patients. Isn't it more of a victim? Isn't he a greater hero if he didn't have polio? Then he's just a nut who hated polio.
Starting point is 00:23:12 I said, No, he really did have. I'm gonna get you polio over the last thing I do. He really did have a kid. I'm not gonna let my guion brace let me down and get you polio. FDR, whatever the cause was, really did become paralyzed from the waist down for a period of time.
Starting point is 00:23:29 The thing is he got better and the way in which he got better, we started to wonder, did he really have polio or did he have something that was probably going to get better anyway? We don't know. It doesn't really matter what he did for polio patients and for the cause of people with disabilities in this country, I think it's right. Whatever he had, he popularized hydrotherapy. for polio patients and for the cause of people with disabilities in this country, I think it's right. Whatever he had, he popularized hydrotherapy. He went to Warm Springs, Georgia because somebody told him, hey, there are these springs
Starting point is 00:23:52 there. There are these warm springs. And they're really great and they'll bring your strength back, so check them out. So he went down, he swam in these waters, and he thought it was had something to do with the minerals and stuff that fixed his muscles. In reality, getting in the water and moving around was probably a great thing to do. Just to keep exercising your muscles and do something that you didn't have any resistance, so no matter how much strength you'd lost, you could still participate in. So he opened a polio rehab facility there at Warm Springs, and
Starting point is 00:24:24 it was the imminent, you know, the pre-eminent place to go if you had polio. And then there were a lot of other places that mimic that. And this probably was really helpful. It doesn't cure polio. It's not the only treatment, but it certainly is helpful for people. And it was good if you consider that the other options at the time were things like surgeries
Starting point is 00:24:41 to lengthen your limbs or electrotherapy, where we shock you or vitamin C, which we know doesn't help. No. One- Unless like tiny tin, you actually have scurvy in which case that is going to fix you right up. No, tiny tin had polio.
Starting point is 00:24:58 Okay. Now one thing I should mention is the iron lung because I think a lot of people hear about it and wonder what it is Initially an iron lung so it was a way to people with polio as they became became paralyzed loss the ability to Breathe they lost the muscles that helped them breathe And so they wouldn't weren't able to breathe An iron lung was a way to force your chest in and out to make you breathe So like a ventilator?
Starting point is 00:25:25 Except it was external. A ventilator now is like a tube that goes down your throat and breathes for you. So it's more like it treats you like a big, squeezy toy. Yes, yes, exactly. I love you. It was initially an electric motor hooked up to two vacuum cleaners.
Starting point is 00:25:39 Cool invention. And if you can Google pictures of this, you're laying in a giant metal, it looks like a coffin with your head sticking out. There were actually walls of them where they would put several people in the same one. It almost looks like where you put bodies like the drawers where they put cadavers. I think they're just jars. Anyway, with head sticking out.
Starting point is 00:26:04 And they would put several children in one of them. And you would apply positive pressure to make you breathe out, and negative pressure would make you breathe in. And it definitely saved lives for the moment, but overall, the mortality rate was high because you can't live in one of those. Right. But people did for a while. People lived in iron lungs for quite a while.
Starting point is 00:26:21 And obviously this was later replaced by ventilators, which is a much better way of taking care of this. Or in one outbreak in 1952 in Copenhagen, it was just a bunch of medical students with anbu bags, the bags that you squeeze the air. Oh gosh. People's mouths. Instead of iron lungs. I know if you can imagine that. That sounds exhausting. There was one treatment for polio that we should mention. It's called the Kinney Regimen. So, like I mentioned, at the time, the status quo for polio patients was to strap them to boards and cast them until they could move. Well, there was an Australian nurse, sister Elizabeth Kinney. Kinne?
Starting point is 00:26:58 No, she was not a nun. Sister, apparently, or at least was, the British title for a chief nurse, and she was a chief nurse in World War I. Okay. So I don't know if that's still the title they use, but sister Elizabeth Kenny, instead of casting patients, she thought that was dumb. She thought it was better to start moving them as early as possible. So she introduced a regimen of applying heat packs to their atrophy muscles and getting
Starting point is 00:27:24 them up and getting them up and moving them with physical therapy and exercise, passive movement, just moving them around and everything. And that's still the standard of care today. I love it. The kidney regimen. It challenged all the probably mostly male doctors
Starting point is 00:27:38 at the time who were saying no, no, no, don't do this and she said, no, I know better, I can figure this out. Now, Sydney, we've had a lot of fun here today but we still have polio kicking around. I know it's not around right now here in America, at least. Is it around worldwide? It's still, we'll get to that. I'm sure I'm rushing you.
Starting point is 00:27:55 How did we make our first like big dent into polio? So first we had to figure out what was causing it. And John Enders was able to do that by growing the virus in a culture in the early 1900s or in 1948-ish, something like that. And that was a big breakthrough because that led us to be able to create a vaccine. You have to have the virus if you can create a to create a vaccine against it. So the first polio vaccine, Jonas Sock created it. It's the injection, so it's the vaccine you and I probably both received, not the one that you take by mouth, the one that you get a shot. And then later, Albert Sabin created the oral polio vaccine, which I've heard some of, I think that's probably
Starting point is 00:28:35 what our parents got, which is they put it, would put it on a sugar cube. And it was an oral vaccine. As a result of these vaccines, we see them introduced in like 1950, 354, and then later the saving vaccine, the cases of polio just drastically start declining. We see polio disappearing virtually as we start vaccinating the population. What's fascinating about the SOC vaccine is one, he tested it on himself, he tested it on his own family. And then he, they basically put it out. It's like a public health triumph. They put it out to all the parents in the US and said, Hey, wants to volunteer their kid to get this experimental vaccine. We think it will save them from polio, but we're not
Starting point is 00:29:21 sure. We think it'll work. What do you think? Do you know that over a million parents were willing to sign up? That's insane. Can you imagine that today? I, you know what? I say no, but like, we haven't had a public health threat like this. You know what? I mean, we've had some that are more insidious. Like, you could make the argument that obesity is like,
Starting point is 00:29:42 is worse in a sense, but it's not that panic inducing. I could see definitely people, like you and I, for example, if we were faced with a similar situation, I think we have enough sort of faith in science that we would, you know. That's what it is, right? It's having faith in science. And I don't know, head to head. Did people have more faith in science than or no?
Starting point is 00:30:04 I don't know. I know. You're listening. Let's hope we don't know, head to head, did people have more faith in science than or no? I don't know. I know. Let's hope we don't have to find out. I know your answer. Yeah, right. So they did. They did these huge trials. It was a huge success. The sock vaccine worked well because it didn't.
Starting point is 00:30:19 It was a killed vaccine. So it couldn't cause polio. That was a side effect, rarely, of the Saban vaccine, the oral vaccine, it was a live vaccine, but the oral vaccine was so much easier to distribute that it was really instrumental in eliminating polio out of a lot of developing countries. Excellent. You know, they didn't patent them. That's great. Yeah. Actually, Jonas Salk's response when he was asked if he would patent it was,
Starting point is 00:30:43 you can't patent the son. Oh my god. I know. I got a good cut. I got a better cut. A lot of the vaccine effort to get to get it out and vaccine, vaccinate all the kids was funded by the March of Dimes, which we're familiar with. FDR was instrumental in this effort in creating public awareness of the, you know, of polio, the importance of the vaccine, the cost, both in physical loss of ability and money in treating people with polio, and long-term rehabbing people with polio. And he changed the way that we look at public health and people with disabilities forever. You know?
Starting point is 00:31:20 Uh, so... Justin's got to stop crying. Stop crying for a second. And also, get your kids vaccinated. Get your kids vaccinated. Polio only exists in a few places on Earth now. We're still working on eradicating it worldwide. We can, we can do that. But you can do your part by just keep getting vaccinated.
Starting point is 00:31:39 Yep. And thank your lucky stars and talk to your grandparents. Yeah, talk to your grandparents. Let's give this polyoe stories coming in. Thank you so much to the Maximum Fund Network for having us as a part of their podcast. Family, there's a ton of great shows you can go listen to. Jordan Jesse Go, lady to lady, one bad mother. Stop podcasting yourself.
Starting point is 00:32:00 There are many for you to enjoy. My brother, my brother, and me. Thank you, dear. You could listen to the adventure zone. It's a D&D podcast. I do with my brothers and my dad my wife doesn't listen But maybe you could maybe you like it more than she might I don't know. I mean it's Dean. I don't Okay, you listen to it. Let me know if you like And we're on Twitter at solbones and we had chervaune addresses. I'm at Justin McRoy. And I'm at Sydney McRoy. S-Y-D-N-E-E. And thanks to the taxpayers for letting us use their song
Starting point is 00:32:29 Medicines, they're the taxpayers on Twitter. If you want to go thank them and then buy their music and I'm sure they would appreciate that. They're at DIY punk bands. I'm sure they'd appreciate a little extra cash in their pocket. And that's going to do for us until next time we have a medical issue for you till next Wednesday. I'm just from Acroix. I'm Sydney McRoy.
Starting point is 00:32:50 As always, don't drill a hole in your head. Alright! Maximumfund.org Comedy and Culture, Artistone Listener Supported

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