Martha Ann Lillard Essay

Martha Ann Lillard woke up one morning in 1953 while she was in kindergarten and she had a sore throat that became something much worse; polio. Martha Ann Lillard was diagnosed with polio at age 5 and was paralyzed from the disease. Polio made her have to stay in her house for about 60 years. The reason that she had to stay home was because she had to stay in an 800 pound iron lung which helped her breathe because her respiratory system was paralyzed. The iron lung also known as a respirator helped a person with polio breathe by increasing and decreasing air pressure to expand and contract their lungs. Martha Ann Lillard went into the iron lung when she was 5 and she came out when she was 65. The big question on all of this is how it came

Health officials thought it had to have been due to the crowds of people contributing to it being spread. These crowds were at movie theaters and swimming pools. As a result of this Health officials closed these places and told parents to keep their children away from everybody. This epidemic led to research on how the disease is spread. In the summer 1921 Franklin Delano Roosevelt was on his yacht when he fell over and fell into the water this made his body feel like it was paralyzed. Then the next day FDR went for a swim to ease the pain but as the day went on he could feel his legs becoming weaker. Then on the 3rd day he couldn’t hold his own weight. First FDR went to see a doctor that gave him a wrong diagnosis but the in August of 1921 diagnosed FDR with infantile paralysis which was the name for polio at that time. Then in 1929 Philip Drinker and Louis Shaw made the iron lung to help respiration. Later in 1931 Sir Macfarlane Burnet and Dame Jean McNamara discovered that there were 3 types of the polio virus. In 1938 the U.S. established the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis which became known as the March of Dimes which was a fundraising organization on polio research. Thomas Weller and Frederick Robbins in 1948 successfully grew the polio virus in cells. Also in 1948 a teacher in a school named Eleanor Abbot invented the famous Candy Land game while she was recovering from

First there is sub-clinical polio which may not have obvious symptoms. In sub-clinical polio over 95 percent of the infected patients don’t have any symptoms. However if the people with sub-clinical polio have symptoms they only last 3 days or less. Some of the symptoms for sub-clinical polio are fever, normal discomfort, vomiting, fever, sore throat, and red throat. Non- paralytic polio has many symptoms that can last for a couple of days or weeks. Next there is the symptoms of non-paralytic polio are fever, meningitis, sore throat, vomiting, headache, tiredness, not normal reflexes, difficulty swallowing, back pain, neck pain, arm pain, leg pain, and muscle tenderness. . Paralytic polio which leads to paralysis has more severe system than the other 2 kinds. People with paralytic polio first get the symptoms of non-paralytic polio then they get the systems of paralytic polio. There are 3 types of paralytic polio which are spinal polio which affects the spinal cord, bulbar polio which affects the brain or bulbospinal polio which is both. The symptoms of paralytic polio are either temporary or permanent paralysis, muscle pain or critical spasms, deformed limbs and loss of reflexes. Lastly there is post-polio syndrome which can occur up to 35 years after a person had the infection. The symptoms of post-polio syndrome are trouble swallowing or breathing, becoming very tired, being easily cold,