Dancing in My Dreams ― Confronting the Spectre of Polio

Across most of the world, an entire generation has lived free from the spectre of polio, but for fifty years during the twentieth century that fear was overwhelming. Polio rapidly became every parent's worst nightmare. Epidemics arrived silently, often with symptoms that could easily be mistaken for a common cold, and dreadful suddenness. Those fortunate enough to survive infection often faced an unfriendly and unhelpful world. Appropriate treatments for polio survivors were fiercely debated. In pre-Second World War Australia, two women symbolised a dramatic rift between the medical community's orthodoxy and those who advocated alternative therapy. In Victoria, Dr Jean Macnamara used splints, plaster casts and braces. In her clinic in Townsville and later in the USA, Sister Elizabeth Kenny championed and practised an alternative approach of little or no form of constraint for the paralysed body, advocating gentle exercise of muscles in the early, acute stage of the disease, and hot packs to relieve pain, spasm and muscle tightness. By the 1950s, most Western countries had abandoned the orthodoxy of immobilising polio survivors in plaster casts for months on end. In Australia, where the medical establishment was largely unquestioned, this treatment was to remain dominant until the 1960s. Dancing in My Dreams 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. For the first time, in a history of this disease, the voice of the polio survivor can also be clearly heard. As the frequency of polio epidemics have declined, so has the collective memory of the experience of the disease. But there is no cure. The treatment for polio today remains the same as it was forty years ago. In Nigeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan, the wild polio virus remains endemic. The striking 50-year decline in the incidence of polio has now stalled, leading to declining levels of immunity in populations. The growth of anti-vaccine sentiment in many societies is a complicated issue, but as this book ends by noting, the success of a vaccination program depends on the cooperation of individuals. As long as a single child remains infected with polio, all unvaccinated children throughout the world will be at risk. About the author: Kerry Highley worked in medical laboratory science for many years before returning to University in 2000 to study history. In 2009 she received her PhD in the History of Medicine from the Australian National University for her thesis on the polio epidemics in Australia. While at the ANU, she tutored in Second World War studies and the History of Terrorism, and retired in 2011 to work on Dancing in My Dreams. Apart from polio, her research interests include the history of the Australian Army Medical Corps in the First World War.