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American Experience
The Polio Crusade
Season 21
Episode 2
In the summer of 1950 Wytheville, VA realized the nation's worst medical fears. An outbreak of Infantile Paralysis, commonly known as Polio, swept through a small town of 5,500 in which 40 percent of residents had not yet reached their eighteenth birthday. Highly contagious, just in time for summer vacation, the devastating neurodegenerative disease had chosen its next target.
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