The polio years in Texas : battling a terrifying unknown / Heather Green Wooten.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

The dawn of a crippling threat -- The Lone Star legacy : polio, Texas politics, and FDR -- Battling a terrifying unknown -- Giving the boot to polio -- Red bricks, white coats, and iron lungs -- Silencing the killer -- A story yet to finish.

From the 1930s to the 1950s, in response to the rising epidemic of polio, Texas researchers led a wave of discoveries in virology, rehabilitative therapies, and the modern intensive care unit. Polio also had a sweeping cultural and societal effect. It engendered fearful responses from parents trying to keep children safe from its ravages and an all-out public information blitz aimed at helping a frightened population protect itself. Houston and Harris County, Texas, had the second-highest rate of infection in the nation. In The Polio Years in Texas, Heather Green Wooten draws on extensive archival research as well as interviews conducted over a five-year period with Texas polio survivors and their families. This is a detailed and intensely human account of not only the epidemics that swept Texas during the polio years, but also of the continuing aftermath of the disease for those who are still living with its effects.