Vintage and Retro Ads, Promos, Fliers, Etc. The organization in the ad, the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, was founded by US President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1938. You may know it by its current name, the March of Dimes. The president's call to action saw an overwhelming response. The surge in funding helped Jonas Salk develop the first polio vaccine at the University of Pittsburgh. It was front page news all around the world:
Although it gave successful protection, it would be Albert Sabin's oral vaccine developed at the University of Cincinnati that would become instrumental in eliminating polio in most countries (there is still natural spread in a few). This is Sabin giving his vaccine to a child in the 1960s. It was often given on sugar cubes.
Massive efforts were held at schools and public venues. This was easier in the days before social media and rapid online spread of disinformation.
The single most famous iron lung ward photo was actually staged for a film, but a typical iron lung ward in the era looked like this.
In the height of the polio pandemic around 1952, the US alone had over 3000 deaths due to respiratory paralysis in a single year, and over 21,000 paralyzed. Roosevelt himself was paralyzed below the waist, and many needed iron lungs to breathe. In 2024, Paul Alexander of Dallas, Texas, died after being confined to an iron lung for 72 years of his 78 year life.
Today, polio is eliminated in most countries, and there are efforts to eliminate it worldwide, so it may join smallpox and rinderpest in the annals of vanquished diseases.
Weird that this printed with the grammar error in the title. Should be "the vaccine" or "vaccinated".
Is this real?
I had noticed that too, but I think it may just be anachronistic phrasing. Consider "he drank water" vs "he drank the water". The first treats water as an indefinite, and the second as an implied definite. If you think of the vaccine as an indefinite, it makes more sense. He received vaccine (indefinite), vs he received the vaccine (definite). We don't say it that way much, so it has an odd ring.
I did run it through two AI checkers before posting. I suppose those could be wrong, but there are lots of other examples of ads from that organization, which has a well documented history.
I'll take your explanation! I thought it might be the case as well (anachronism), but it's just one I've never encountered before.
It's certainly getting harder to know for sure. I got fooled once already (I deleted the whole post), and nearly a couple other times. Got saved a week ago by Snopes just before I hit post on a fake Atari ad!
See also:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1925_serum_run_to_Nome
A sister of my grandmother, which lived with is in oir house, had polio as a child. She was paralized in her right arm.
My mothers little brother died at 5 from Diphteria, shortly after WWII ended, when she was in her teens. She always was still in pain when talking about this.
She made sure me and my siblings got all vaccines available. I got that polio sugar cube in the second year of primary school.
I hate how stupid some people are.
Wasn't aware of a sugar cube option. I had to get an injected one. But I think it was combined with other things as well. I dunno. I just turned up and got the thing they were giving everyone at school and then we proceeded to punch each other in the arm because teens are idiots.
Oh yeah! That's one of my favorite heroic stories, for how so many people came together to make it happen, contributing their unique abilities, be it pilots in those newfangled airplane things, to the sled dog teams, doctors, coordination from government officials, on and on.
The polio vaccine was the first injection I ever had, age about 6. We were all lined up at school, and of course the first kids started crying and soon everyone in the queue was howling. I remember the poor teachers trying to calm us all down.
I know there were other factors that also made the oral one important, but I always figured the sugar-cube administration might've really helped hit the big numbers needed to stem the spread. There's bound be less resistance to hauling kids in to eat a sugar cube, compared to a shot that ends with them in tears.
The National Foundation FOR Infant Paralysis
Those bastards!
Don't even get me started on the bastards who invented baby oil. They never even disclosed how many babies went into a bottle of it.
Would you like to donate to fight youth diabetes? 50 cents gets you three minutes and a hammer.
Here, take a headache pill!
parents grew up when hospitals had entire wings, not just wards, dedicated to iron lungs
