A special cylinder called an iron lung arrived at the San Bernardino County Hospital on Aug. 22, 1956, flown in from Oregon to help 10-month-old polio patient Rebecca Fuller of Hinkley continue to breathe.
A year earlier, Janet Holden, 19, of Pomona was a candidate for queen of the Los Angeles County Fair when she suddenly collapsed while posing for photos. She was sent to the county hospital in Los Angeles diagnosed with what was also called infantile paralysis.
Stories about polio were all too common in the Inland Empire and everywhere else in the world in the 1930s through 1950s.
That disease is a distant memory now — obliterated by the development of highly effective vaccines. But it wasn’t that many years ago that parents were terrorized that their children could become permanently crippled or even die from it.
Polio, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is an infectious disease in the throat and intestines usually caused through poor sanitation. It can be transmitted from one person to another through contact of feces — often due to failure to wash hands after using the bathroom. In some cases, it could also be transmitted through the air.
And while the cause is known today, officials years ago were desperate to find a way to fight the disease. In 1934, Colton health officials recommended the City Council close its swimming pool to children under 14 hoping to stop the spread of whatever was causing the disease, reported the Sun on June 12, 1934. The newspaper said at that same time, there were 186 polio cases in the county hospital in Los Angeles.
Other remedies were proposed in hopes one might be the right one.
“Although the exact cause of polio has not been found conclusively, many doctors are of the opinion that it is fly-borne,” noted a Sun article on Aug. 23, 1949.
As a result, San Bernardino residents were asked to help in a week-long “blitzkrieg” against flies and were given free supplies of DDT insecticide. Similar campaigns were planned for Fontana, Rialto, Redlands, Colton and Riverside. Such an effort didn’t prevent polio but probably helped cut down on the fly populations in our agricultural region.
Meanwhile, area newspapers each week would list the number of new polio patients, many of whom were assigned to their respective county hospitals for care.
Playing a key role in the treatment of young polio victims was what today is known as Casa Colina Hospital and Centers for Healthcare in Pomona. It was opened in Chino in 1936 by Frances Eleanor Smith, herself a polio survivor, to assist young people in recovering from the disease.
For years, hospitals throughout the region sent recovering polio cases to Casa Colina, which started with 35 beds but soon was forced to expand.
On Sept. 16, 1948, for instance, Casa Colina had a couple of dozen children with polio under its care and just received five more from Los Angeles, Long Beach and San Bernardino, reported the Sun the following day. Three other young people had improved to the point they could be released to their homes to continue their recovery, and make room for more new cases.
By the early 1950s, the number of cases reached epidemic status nationally, with more than 50,000 cases reported in a single year.
But the people most affected by the disease — everyday citizens — played a key role in raising funds for polio research beginning in the 1930s. The drive was called the March of Dimes and used President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was confined to a wheelchair due a childhood case of polio, as an element in its fund drive.
The March of Dimes, which now focuses on prevention of birth defects, raised money via widespread grassroots campaigns especially involving children. These collections of money, many at just a dime at a time, helped pay for polio treatment and some of the research that led to amazing breakthroughs.
In the early 1950s, Jonas Salk introduced an effective vaccine taken by injection.
During the 13 months from May 1955 to July 1956, more than 30 million U.S. children received polio immunizations.
And the number of polio cases plunged. In 1952 there were 119 polio cases reported in San Bernardino County. By 1958, medical officials saw only 10, all reported in people who had not been vaccinated.
Four years later, Albin Sabin’s oral vaccines finished off polio as a rampant threat. His oral vaccine was distributed usually in sugar cubes to clinics and schools everywhere. On May 12-13, 1962, San Bernardino County put on 51 clinics from Chino to as far away as Trona, Baker and Amboy, delivering the Sabin vaccine to thousands of adults and children.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said not a single polio case has been reported among U.S. residents since 1979. A few cases have arrived here with foreign travelers so the agency still urges maintaining immunity for polio by continuing vaccinations.
Joe Blackstock writes on Inland Empire history. He can be reached at joe.blackstock@gmail.com or Twitter @JoeBlackstock.
