The Autumn Ghost: How the Battle Against a Polio Epidemic Revolutionized Modern Medical Care

Americans knew polio as the "summer plague." In countries further North, however, the virus arrived later in the year. It was described by one writer as "the autumn ghost."



Intensive care units and mechanical ventilation are the crucial foundation of modern medical care: without them, the appalling death toll of the COVID-19 pandemic would be even higher. In The Autumn Ghost, Dr. Hannah Wunsch traces the origins of these two innovations back to a polio epidemic in the autumn of 1952. Drawing...