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Hot Summers of the Past
By Ursula B.G. Kilner, Salisbury
Weather is a topic of conversation year 'round, not only in New England but all around the U.S. Of recent date we have had highs and lows and at the moment we are back in a dry spell, while I am writing to friends in Texas who are in the midst of unprecedented floods.
But who remembers 1932? That year all the schools in the United States were closed an extra six weeks at the end of summer. Why? Because poliomyelitis (commonly called "polio") was rampant and there was no cure and no preventative—no immunization.
I was with my parents in Venice (Italy, not Florida), where mosquitoes thrive and every bed had its share of mosquito netting. My father was recuperating after almost losing a leg to gangrene, having been squashed under the taxi in which he was riding when it got broadsided by a limousine leaving the House of Lords in London. Since he did not have to hurry back to his job in New York City, I had a two-month tour in Venice and became, as is possible for the young when immersed in a foreign language, a child playing with other children in San Marco Plaza.
Back home in the U.S., children were watched very carefully for the dreaded signs of "infantile paralysis," as polio was called then. And it was hot both in the U.S. and in Venice, where we were.
The next summer (1933) proved to be yet another blistering season. My parents had bought a house in the New York City suburbs, so my mother and I spent most of that summer in the cool basement. It was hot! My parents and I slept on improvised beds in the living room, which was a tad cooler than the upstairs bedrooms. Polio kept appearing in some areas—not as virulently as two years before, but scary—and about three summers later one of my friends contracted polio in her spine. But her brother and I were of greater interest to the doctors than the stricken Barbara.
We, as children, thought that doctors were only involved with curing someone who was sick, so why were they so interested in us? We had been swimming together in the backyard pool and eating at the same table, where we shared a lot of "finger food." The doctors took blood samples, pounded our backs and chests and listened to same with stethoscopes, then peered down our throats and gazed into our eyes and ears. The MDs were puzzled: why we were not sick too? Neither Barbara's brother nor I ever contracted polio. Meanwhile, Barbara was getting great care and consequently came out of the polio siege with no ill effects. In fact, she is now a grandmother and quite busy in Bethlehem, PA.
One of life's mysteries to me has been the crediting of Jonas Salk with the development of the principal vaccine that stopped the polio scares, when actually it was Dr. Sabin's vaccine that proved safe and effective. Everyone I know who got the Salk vaccine has to be poked and prodded by doctors every year—so there have been, apparently, many bad effects resulting from the Salk vaccine, which has not been used for many years.
Poliomyelitis was the most feared disease for children when I was growing up. In some of the recent hot and humid weather I remembered the extra six weeks of vacation I got in Venice when the schools were closed, and then the experience of a close friend contracting the disease. We can be thankful now when the hot and humid weather presses down on us that we have different ailments—like road rage, no air conditioning, bug bites and poison ivy. We so quickly forget the terrors of earlier years and should, once in a while, be thankful that so many of the childhood diseases are now preventable or curable. But something else will, no doubt, come along to provide troubles of mind and body and test our staying powers.
When I think of it, "If summer comes, can fall be far behind?"
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