Elegy for a Disease: A Personal and Cultural History of Polio

In skillful prose, Finger merges memoir with historical narrative about how polio was viewed and dealt with in the years before the Salk vaccine was invented 50 years ago. Evocative and often poetic, the memoir is also a litany of the miserable, useless, even harmful treatments imposed by helpless doctors on suffering children. She offers a nuanced history, for instance, of the painful and unorthodox heat treatments espoused by Elizabeth Kenny. Finger (Bone Truth ), a creative writing teacher at Wayne State and the University of Texas at Austin, was a toddler when she contracted polio in 1954 and describes the traumatic operations, beginning when she was six, that led in turn to complications when she was in her 40s. Taught to believe that she could overcome her disability, Finger overexercised and, while living in England, attended antiwar demonstrations that were physically dangerous. Hospitalized with depression at 20, Finger believes her emotional state can be attributed to polio's effects on the brain in addition to having an abusive father who once choked her during a rage. After years of dissociating herself from others who had had polio, Finger writes, she slowly began her involvement in the disability rights movement and has dealt with a diagnosis of postpolio syndrome. (Nov.)