LaVO: Central Bucks PA School Nurse Gladys Nelson and the Conquest of Polio

Carl LaVO, Courier Times Correspondent

I remember the other pandemic-like scare. The one in the 1950s paralyzing and killing kids. Mom and Dad sternly warned me and my sisters not to play in puddled water. Nor ride a bicycle through it. Parents believed the water contained the deadly polio virus that caused infantile paralysis. If you got it and were lucky to survive, you might spend the rest of your short life in an “iron lung,” a nightmarish mechanical monster that kept you breathing.

To fight the epidemic when much was unknown, towns where I lived in California spread chemicals on stagnant water. Social distancing took effect as well. Theaters, swimming pools, churches, schools and public meeting places closed whenever there was a substantial outbreak. Parents lived in fear, desperate to protect their children. Rumors spread relentlessly: Italian immigrants brought the virus. Car exhaust caused the disease. Cats spread it. None of it true.

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