Bucking the System: Women in the Health
Sciences at the University of Iowa, 1874 - 1950

Red Cross and Polio

During the summer of 1881, one year before the government officially approved the ARC, the fledgling organization participated in its first mission assisting those affected by the Michigan forest fires. In 1884 ARC volunteers ran steamboats up the Mississippi to deliver supplies to victims of devastating floods. Since then, the American Red Cross has enlisted the help of millions of volunteers, especially in disaster relief activities, and in aid to servicemen and women, particularly during times of war.

The Red Cross provides a broad range of services to those in need. Volunteers donate time, food, shelter, clothing, financial assistance, counseling, and many other services to victims of disaster and natural catastrophes. In war time, they have supplied millions of clothing articles for soldiers and refugees, made surgical dressings, raised funds, trained and placed nurse's aides, and collected blood. The Red Cross also searches for MIA's, helps families communicate with their relatives in the military, and assists disabled veterans. One of their primary directives is to help the government secure family information in matters of discharge, furlough, or clemency, and to advise members of the armed services and their families on current regulations and making claims for compensation and government benefits.

Nurse's Aides Are Needed
"Iowa City women are being asked to re-evaluate their home duties and personal interests to find free time during the day for volunteer war service as Red Cross nurse's aides." (IC local paper)

The need for volunteers increases dramatically in times of war. During World War II, the American Red Cross called upon women all over the country to donate their time and skills to serve the war effort. The Johnson County Red Cross Chapter was no exception. The Office of the Civilian Defence suggested each city maintain a minimum of 6 trained nurse's aides per 1000 residents. Iowa City's quota was 98 nurse's aides.

The first Iowa City class of 33 volunteer nurse's aides completed their training by the Red Cross in early 1942. After completion of the 80-hour course--40 hours of classes and 40 hours of supervised practice on a ward--each vowed to serve at least 150 hours per year at Mercy or University Hospitals to relieve trained nurses for wartime duties. Most of them served at the University Hospital. The nurse's aides performed a variety of chores in the hospitals including bathing and feeding patients, taking temperatures and pulse rates, cleaning, organizing supplies, and making beds. This freed the nurses to care for critically ill patients. Were it not for the efforts of these Red Cross volunteers, the quality of patient care at home and at the theater of operations would have suffered tremendously.

60. Red Cross Nurse's Aide Uniform circa 1943 Red Cross Nurse's Aide volunteers were issued with uniforms that distinguished them from trained nurses and student nurses. They performed a variety of tasks which freed graduate nurses to tend to the most critical patients. Courtesy of the Johnson County Chapter of the American Red Cross

The University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics was one of the leading centers for polio treatment and research at this time. The polio isolation ward was on first floor west of General Hospital, and it was a center which provided care for people from all over the nation. Often as many as thirty to forty children with acute paralytic disease and from ten to twenty patients in respirators were placed on this ward. The unit eventually became so crowded that all of the polio patients were moved to the Children's Hospital. Overcrowding continued to be severe; in 1950 the Hospital admitted 560 patients to the polio ward, and within two years that number had grown by more than a hundred.

61. Patient with Birthday Gift 1948 Courtesy of University of Iowa Photo Service Pediatric Polio Isolation Unit Children's Hospital circa 1950 Courtesy of University of Iowa Photo Service Transporting Iron Lung circa 1950 Courtesy of University of Iowa Photo Service

In the winter of 1952 to 1953, Gerhard Hartman, the Superintendent of the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, wrote letters to administrators at Veterans Hospital and Mercy Hospital in Iowa City. His letters express gratitude for the loan of twenty-one hospital beds and a respirator; they also reveal the severity of the 1952 outbreak (3,564 cases were reported in the state of Iowa.) Hartman wrote,

As you know, during the past year we treated approximately 700 polio patients and most of them were admitted in a 75 day interval last fall. The unanticipated pressure of admissions outstripped many of our resources and adequate bed space was one major problem more easily handled through your cooperation.

Polio outbreaks continued throughout the fifties, but the high numbers of cases gradually tapered off. Jonas Salk's discovery of a vaccine made polio epidemics a thing of the past.

(A History of the Department of Pediatrics, by Paul B. McCray, p. 43 and A Pictorial History of the University of Iowa, by John Gerber, p. 196.)

62.Braces 1949 The donor writes: "My brother Ted* is the 8th in a family of 11 children. He was 13 when he was stricken on Labor Day week-end, 1949. He was very ill, had a trache, and was in an iron lung. He was at Children's Hospital from Labor Day until Christmas, came home for the holidays, and was back in Iowa City during January and February of 1950. It was during this second visit that the braces were fitted. After he was discharged, he and my parents struggled daily with those confounded braces, but he never walked again. He is paralyzed from the waist down, and had been confined to a wheelchair all these years. Ted attended all 4 years of high school and graduated, quite a feat in itself, as all classrooms were on second floor. In those days, there was no such thing as "access for the handicapped." Our brothers and friends just made it a point to always have someone available to help. After high school, Ted began a job that he still holds - managing a satellite office for a group of veterinarians from a neighboring town. He bought a car, which a mechanic friend altered to hand controls, which was rare around here at the time. The car really did, and still does, a lot for his morale; he no longer had to rely on others to go when and where he wanted.

Ted is an avid Iowa basketball fan - he has had season tickets for probably 20 years, long before Lute's reign, and had sat through many losing seasons. Ted is 53 now - he has severe scoliosis of the spine because he did not wear the back brace he was also fitted with, (I did not find that.) He is fiercely independent; it's almost impossible to help him in any way." *The name Ted is used to protect his identity. UIHC Medical Museum Donor anonymous

Poliomyelitis:
Number of reported cases in the state of Iowa, 1945-1970

The Iron Lung
The Iron Lung, described as a body tank respirator, was invented by Drs. Philip Drinker and Louis A. Shaw in 1928 at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston. The Iron Lung proved very successful for ventilating the patient whose respiratory system was paralyzed, and was most heavily utilized during the polio epidemic; it remains in use today by many polio patients.

63. UIHC Medical Museum. Gift of Kirkwood Community College, 1986

The Iron Lung is an airtight cylinder that accommodates the patient up to the neck, leaving the head exposed. By means of a large bellows located on the underside of the cylinder and powered electrically or manually, a subatmospheric (negative) pressure is created within the cylinder. The negative pressure within the chamber which surrounds the patient's chest is less than the pressure outside the cylinder, causing air to move into the patient's lungs and creating an effective breath. In the late 1950's and early 1960's, the Iron Lung was eventually replaced by more sophisticated ventilation devices. The new devices were considerably smaller and quieter to operate, and they permitted easier access to the patient.

One of the earliest mechanical devices for ventilation, the iron lung has continued to be a useful, non-invasive means of artificial respiration for six decades. Despite the difficulties associated with its use, it is making a resurgence because of its less invasive method of ventilation.