PA College Magazine - 14

HALL OF
HISTORY

Remembering the Polio Epidemic
In the months since COVID-19 has
taken grip, people around the globe have
quickly adapted to stay-at-home orders,
mask-wearing and social distancing.
For those with long memories, the
global pandemic has brought to mind
other world-changing disease outbreaks,
such as the polio epidemic that swept
through the United States, peaking at
58,000 cases in 1952.
Harriett Catherine Hoffer '44 was
among the many PA College students
and alumni who worked on the front
lines of the polio epidemic. As a student
nurse at Lancaster General Hospital
(LGH), she spent the summers of 1943
and 1944 serving on the four-bed polio
unit, which held three young boys and
one adult male - Richard Hoffer, her
future husband.
"There was no air-conditioning in
those days and it was beastly hot!"

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recalled Hoffer in an interview last
winter. What's more, all the nurses on
the polio ward were required to isolate
from friends and family throughout the
time they worked there, she said.
Known as "infant paralysis," polio took
a horrible toll on its victims, paralyzing
limbs and sometimes causing difficulty
swallowing and breathing. Some
patients spent months laying prone in
"iron lungs." Many others, including
most hospitalized children, were
strapped to bed frames before being
transitioned into cumbersome metal
leg braces.
At LGH, Hoffer recalled, nurses
implemented the use of "kenny packs"
- a treatment approach that involved
hot packs and exercise of affected
limbs. The steamy woolen kenny packs
only compounded the discomfort of
the young patients, Hoffer recalls.

"I felt just horrible for the three little
boys, who also had to lay so still for so
long," she said.
It would be another decade before the
polio menace was subdued, with the
1955 announcement that Jonas Salk
had developed a vaccine. In 1962, the
oral vaccine developed by Albert Sabin
became available.
Catherine served as a nurse at LGH for
eight years after graduating, and then
worked for 28 years in the office of a
local doctor. The couple had a daughter,
Karen Beth, who died in 2014, and
enjoyed a 40-year marriage before
Robert's passing in 1986.
Catherine Hoffer's memories of her
time on the polio ward remained sharp,
even 70 years later. Sadly, soon after her
interview with us, she died on May 7,
2020, at the age of 96. n

Syringe and vials image (upper left): courtesy of the National Museum of American
History, Kenneth E. Behring Center via the Smithsonian Institution.
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PA College Magazine

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