Polio: An American Story, and: The Death of a Disease: A History of the Eradication of Poliomyelitis, and: Polio and Its Aftermath: The Paralysis of Culture, and: Living with Polio: The Epidemic and its Survivors (review)

On 12 April 1955, Dr. Thomas Francis, Jr., announced the success of the field tests he had supervised of Dr. Jonas Salk's "killed-virus" polio vaccine. The double-blind trials, involving nearly two million children, paved the way for mass vaccinations that led to the drastic decline of polio cases in the United States within two years. The fiftieth anniversary of the Salk vaccine's debut witnessed an outpouring of books about polio, four of which are under consideration here. David M. Oshinsky's Polio and Bernard Seytre and Mary Shaffer's Death of a Disease cover familiar ground, telling the story of vaccine development, scientific rivalry, and the persistence of polio in parts of Africa and Asia. Daniel J. Wilson's Living with Polio and Marc Shell's Polio and Its Aftermath attempt new approaches to the history and interpretation of polio, plumbing survivors' narratives for the first time and, in Shell's case, offering sweeping theories that place the epidemics of the twentieth century at the center of American (and Canadian) culture.

Oshinsky recounts meticulously the famous rivalry between Salk and Albert Sabin, whose "live-virus" vaccine would for many years be the gold standard of polio prevention; neither man emerges unsullied. Moreover, Oshinsky emphasizes, the glory belongs to a much wider list of unsung scientists whose work preceded and accompanied that of the dueling frontrunners. Whether reporting the strategies of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis (a fundraising dynamo under the leadership of Franklin D. Roosevelt's law partner Basil O'Connor) or explaining the scientific and ethical dilemmas involved in the human testing of the new vaccines, Oshinsky creates a narrative rich with drama and detail. If the history he writes is a traditional one in which doctors, scientists, and philanthropists play the key roles, it is nonetheless an informative and readable one.

Seytre and Shaffer, writing from a public health perspective, also make no novel interpretive contribution to the literature on polio. What they do provide is an international perspective on post-1955 polio vaccine research, and an up-to-date report on global efforts toward the eradication of the disease. Whereas most recent books on polio conclude with a discussion of post-polio syndrome, The Death of a Disease points to the latest cases of acute disease to say that this battle has not yet been won in the world theater.

Daniel Wilson and Marc Shell introduce a new era in the historiography of polio. Polio survivors themselves, both authors put people who had the disease at the center of their studies, in part by drawing from 150 or so "polio narratives," or memoirs of people who had polio. To differing effect, and incorporating the insights of disability studies and of cultural studies, respectively, their two books give an insider's view of the polio experience, making no scholarly sacrifices along the way.

Wilson's book is by far the more straightforward and accessible. It focuses on the epidemics of 1930 to...