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I wasn't expecting to find a song about polio in the American Yiddish Penny Songs collection but there it was, words by Sam Dinerzon, tune from a song I posted recently: Di milkhome by Jacob Zilbert and Gus Goldstein, published in 1907.

Here's the video I made today:



At History of vaccines I read:

It is likely that polio has plagued humans for thousands of years. An Egyptian carving from around 1400 BCE depicts a young man with a leg deformity similar to one caused by polio. Polio circulated in human populations at low levels and appeared to be a relatively uncommon disease for most of the 1800s.

Polio reached epidemic proportions in the early 1900s in countries with relatively high standards of living, at a time when other diseases such as diphtheria, typhoid, and tuberculosis were declining. Indeed, many scientists think that advances in hygiene paradoxically led to an increased incidence of polio. The theory is that in the past, infants were exposed to polio, mainly through contaminated water supplies, at a very young age. Infants’ immune systems, aided by maternal antibodies still circulating in their blood, could quickly defeat poliovirus and then develop lasting immunity to it. However, better sanitary conditions meant that exposure to polio was delayed until later in life, on average, when a child had lost maternal protection and was also more vulnerable to the most severe form of the disease.

Wikipedia says:

By 1907 approximately 2,500 cases of poliomyelitis were reported in New York City... [In 1916] there were over 2,000 deaths in New York City alone.

Text and translation after the jump.



Fathers and mothers are crying now, terror reigns in every home.
Thousands of children are becoming cripples, many are stolen away by death.
The child plays, healthy as a giant, the mamma gives endless kisses,
Suddenly unable to stand up, the child is paralyzed in a moment.
There's lamenting and crying.
Who can bear to witness this sorrow: the child can't stand on his legs.

There are many children left crippled now.
How great is the calamity, how great the heartache.
Before you have a chance to raise your child, an epidemic comes.
It steals the child and breaks the mother's heart.

The epidemic doesn't distinguish between poor and rich
It does as it pleases to everyone equally
You can't buy your way out of it with money
Endless numbers of children will not be able to walk
Here a mother is crying, "Woe is me,
Who can bear to see this tragedy."
The mother's eyes gushing with tears
Storms are flowing from her eyes
Her heart is broken and desolate.

Professors console us, but they can't cure it,
they can't stop the epidemic quickly.
It's "Infantile paralysis," they tell us,
How does that help console us now?
The ambulance is busy, it shudders horribly,
Fresh victims are already waiting for it.
Three children are taken away from one house...
Oh, God, where is your mercy?
Hear the children crying! Only you, God, can help,
So such a tragedy does not come again.

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For sheet music and/or performances contact me: jane@mappamundi.com

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Labels: disaster, history, New York, travails