The Most powerful medical picture of the Last Century

This is the most powerful picture of the last century. It features the fight of America against the Poliomyelitis epidemic of 1950. It also tells us the power of Vaccination 

It was taken inside the auditorium of a Medical College of Los Angeles, California in 1953.

 The chairs have been removed to accommodate 33 Iron Lung machines inside which Polio stricken children with respiratory paralysis were nursed. 

Iron Lungs

( A child with polio respiratory and paralysis has to lie down inside this machine. otherwise he is going to be choked and die. A mirror showing his face is the only entertainment he has.)

Drinker’s Iron Lung machine is a coffin like respirator that produces negative pressure so that the lungs of the child encashed inside it are inflated during inspiration. It’s a crude 1950 equivalent of the present day ventilator.

In 1950s, Polio was a great killer. Of course, we don’t have a treatment for the virus till date. In the 1950s, it peculiarly affected the rich and urban Americans more than the poor. Even Franklin D Roosevelt  the legendary President of America had suffered from Paralytic Polio at the age of 39 years. He went on to become the President of USA for a record 3 terms and worked incessantly for the development of a Polio Vaccine. Thanks to his efforts, the timeline of poliomyelitis changed

• 1955– Salks Killed Polio vaccine was licensed. 
• 1958– The Polio epidemic of America was controlled. 
• 1960– Introduction of Sabin’s Oral Polio Vaccine helped remove the disease from the face of earth. 
• Today– Iron Lung machine has become a history.

This pic which featured in the 1953 issue of the Life Magazine grimly reminds us why Vaccination is the second greatest medical intervention of our time. 

Stop vaccination and our hospitals will be filled wall to wall with sick and dying children.