Mending bodies : polio treatment in Australia

Abstract

This thesis examines the social context of a disease during a time of social crisis: the epidemics of poliomyelitis that emerged in the twentieth century. Its focus is on the Australian experience, within the context of what was happening overseas, particularly in the United States of America, England and New Zealand. It investigates the disease of polio and its treatment over a long period, the scientific endeavour that led to the discovery of the poliovirus, and the early studies in virology and immunology that culminated in the production of a polio vaccine. Early histories of medicine were often written from the perspective of the leading medical men and neglected the experience of the patient, who was viewed with increased subjectivity. That approach has changed and, throughout this thesis, the voice of the polio survivor can be heard clearly. The personality of the survivor governed the response to the disease: ethnicity, class, age and gender all mediated the individual reaction. For some polio survivors, feelings of fear, rejection, denial and anger at suddenly finding themselves to be different in a world that valued conformity were universal.

For two generations in the twentieth century, the influence of polio was profound, especially for those who survived their encounter with the virus and were treated for the paralysis that sometimes followed: treatment that generated a fierce debate between medical practitioners and those who advocated alternative therapies. By the 1950s, most Western countries had abandoned the orthodox medical practice of immobilising polio survivors in plaster casts for many months. That was not the case in Australia, where the monopoly of orthodox medicine in the treatment of polio paralysis remained unchallenged until the counterculture and feminist movements, political activism, and the influx of new ideas from around the world transformed Australian society and its formerly unquestioning attitude towards doctors and medicine.