A paralysing fear: the history of polio

Iron lung - Science Museum via Wellcome Collection (CC BY 4.0)

By Beth Roberts

After decades without polio in the UK, reports of potential community transmission in London and plans to vaccinate almost a million children have come as an unwelcome surprise. But before the polio vaccine, outbreaks of this life-altering and often deadly disease were far from unusual.

While children playing loudly in public parks and swimming pools may be the typical sounds of summer today, these places would often have been eerily silent at the height of summer in the mid-20th Century – closed to slow the regular outbreaks of polio.¹