''The Polio Years in Texas'' Book Signing - Bell County Museum

The Bell County Museum will host a book signing for Dr. Heather Wooten's new book, "The Polio Years in Texas: Battling a Terrifying Unknown" on Saturday, January 23rd, 2010 from 2-4 p.m. The book signing is free, open to the public, and refreshments will be served.

Dr. Wooten writes, "From the 1930s to the 1950s, in response to the rising epidemic of polio, Texas researchers led a wave of discoveries, rehabilitative therapies, and the modern intensive care unit that transformed the field nationally. The disease threatened the lives of children and adults in the U.S., especially in the South, arousing the same kind of fear more recently associated with AIDS and other dread diseases. At the time, little was known, but eventually the medical responses to polio changed the medical landscape forever.

"Polio also had a sweeping cultural and societal effect. It engendered fearful responses from parents trying to keep children safe from its ravages and an all-out public information blitz aimed at helping a frightened population protect itself. The disease exacted a very real tool on the families, friends, healthcare resources, and social fabric of those who contracted the disease and endured its acute, convalescent, and rehabilitation phases."

In the new book, Dr. Wooten draws on extensive archival research as well as interviews conducted over a five-year period with Texas polio survivors and their families. This is a detailed and intensely human account of not only the epidemics that swept Texas during the polio years, but also of the continuing aftermath of the disease for those who are still living with its effects. Public health and medical professionals, historians, and interested general readers will derive deep and lasting benefits from reading "The Polio Years in Texas".