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Artifacts

POLIO VACCINE WORKS!

Robert M. Eiben, MD; 1955; Toomey Pavilion, Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio

Pediatrician Robert M. Eiben recalls his experience working in the respiratory care and rehabilitation center at Toomey Pavilion in Cleveland, Ohio:

"No single event impressed me more than what happened on April 12, 1955, the day the results of the evaluation of the 1954 poliomyelitis vaccine field trials were announced. As I was making my rounds that afternoon, I was taken aback to find a banner stuck on the doors of the respirator wards that read: 'POLIO VACCINE WORKS.' The patients had asked the volunteers, who published an in house newsletter entitled 'The Toomeyville Gazette,' to spread the good news."

Eiben, Robert M. "Twilight of the Contagious Disease Hospital." Polio. Ed. Thomas M. Daniel and Frederick C. Robbins. Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 1997. 107-108.

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