Polio: the seat in South Bend, and the clinic record that was not found

1950 – 1962

Where polio care sat for this county, at boundary size: the state established the Northern Indiana Children's Hospital in 1950 at 1234 North Notre Dame Avenue, South Bend, for children crippled by polio — the seat of this county's polio care, across the city line, as the hospital map of this valley so often was. The nation's worst polio year, 1952, counted 57,879 cases. One patient's account carries the institution's measure: Janet Hudson, in a Fort Wayne News-Sentinel retrospective of 2000, told of five weeks in an iron lung, a tracheotomy, and a year of rehabilitation within its walls. The Salk vaccine was licensed in 1955 and the Sabin oral vaccine followed in 1961–62; in 1961 the General Assembly converted the hospital to other uses, the vaccine having emptied the wards it was built to fill. Mishawaka's children were treated there as county residents at a state institution seated in South Bend — that, precisely, is Mishawaka's share, and it is printed at that strength.

The clinic record was not found, and the searched negative prints whole:The medical-advancements file already prints polio as a named gap on the Mishawaka side. This pass searched again, deliberately: repeated searches for Salk-era school and mass clinics in St. Joseph County, South Bend and Mishawaka, for the 1954 field trial and for the April–May 1955 rollout, returned no county clinic date, site or count. The negative is therefore printed as a finding, not an omission: the clinics happened — a licensed vaccine in the spring of 1955 was not left in its cartons — but their paper record does not stand in any source reached.Tribune and Enterprise runs of April–May 1955, the county health department's records, and the March of Dimes chapter records.

Sources

1. The South Bend epidemics record — Northern Indiana Children's Hospital: state-established 1950, 1234 North Notre Dame Avenue; the 1961 General Assembly conversion; U.S. cases 1952, 57,879; Salk licensed 1955, Sabin oral 1961–62. Boundary-printed.
2. Fort Wayne News-Sentinel retrospective (2000) — Janet Hudson's account: five weeks in an iron lung, tracheotomy, a year of rehabilitation.