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K–12 teaching and learning · from the UNC School of Education

Whatever Happened to Polio

http://americanhistory.si.edu/polio/

Provider: National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution


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“Polio was the most notorious disease of the twentieth century until AIDS.” It has been fifty years since the vaccines to prevent polio were developed by Dr. Albert Sabin and Dr. Jonas Salk. The collections of the Smithsonian Institution are used here to illustrate the horrors of Polio and the triumphs of the vaccines. Photographs, ephemera, and factoids help tell the story of this disease.

The site includes activities which help students understand the life cycle of the virus and how those who have disabilities deal with the architectural barriers in daily life. A timeline shows the history of the disease which began with the evidence of sporadic epidemics of polio which predate recorded history to the present.