Virginia Sawmills of the 1900s

I started off my research with a nice online game of Kings Corner.  But I realized that wasn’t getting me very far, so I decided to try Google instead.

I started by searching “1950s federal polio vaccine,” which resulted in nothing useful.  Then I tried “federally mandated polio vaccine” (also useless) and several others.  I found myself searching through the references at the bottom of the Wikipedia page titled “Polio Vaccine,” I posted a Facebook status asking if anyone knew anything about it.  I asked my dad, who had no idea what I was talking about, but offered to help with my research.  I even emailed the WHO (World Health Organization) but didn’t receive a reply.  After quite a bit of collaboration with my dad (at least an hour), we came up with this book.

Yeah, one book.

It was published by the United States Army in 1957 and is titled “Medical Service: Program to Vaccinate Civilian Federal Employees Against Poliomyelitis.”  Unfortunately, the only portions of the book that are available online are the title and a small amount of publication information.  Obviously, this isn’t very much to go on in what was supposed to be a small project, but here’s what I have.  It started either in 1957 or shortly before – no earlier than 1955, as that is when the first Polio vaccine was developed.  The description of the book offers no author, no name of the program, no information on the funding, and no description of whether or not the vaccine was mandatory or voluntary.  Based on the wording of the original question I received in class last week, my guess would be that the vaccination was mandated, but I can’t say I have a strong basis for that assumption.

I honestly would consider buying the book and looking into the details of this program, because all of the things I mentioned above as unknown factors are things that I would be interested in finding out.  But I didn’t buy the book because this is a digital history class and everything I use in my research is supposed to be accessible online, so I decided not to.  Also I wouldn’t receive it in time, but that’s beside the point.

The lack of information on what was a federal program surprises me.  I thought that government websites and archives would have this sort of stuff online, since it’s a part of our history as a nation, and a huge part of our medical advancements in the past 100 years.

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