I was a child of the 1950s, and though I don’t remember much of my earliest days, I do remember polio. It was more the rule than the exception in those days to have some classmates in wheelchairs or on crutches and occasionally to have one disappear completely, never to return.
While I don’t recall the fear that must have accompanied that reality, I know it was always there in the minds of my parents and other adults in my childhood, an underlayment of dread for all the children of the world.
The Woman with the Cure by Lynn Cullen tells the remarkable story of why and how this is no longer the case. It tells the story of Dr. Dorothy Horstmann, a relatively unknown researcher who, unlike her more famous colleagues Albert Sabin and Jonas Salk, was driven to defeat the disease, regardless of any accolades that might accompany that accomplishment.
Horstmann’s quest to end the scourge of polio was even more remarkable because, as a woman who dared to walk the male-dominated halls of medicine in the 1940s and 1950s, she had to overcome not only the limited technology available to scientists at that time but also the always-present prejudices.
Plus, Horstmann and her peers were out to defeat a foe they could not even see. They were always aware that summer—polio season—was just around the corner, knowing that the cycle of misery would resume when the weather turned warm.
Cullen is an artist, with historical fiction as her canvas. She has the rare ability to take a series of facts from history books and weave from them stories of real people going about the business of living their lives as they built the world we now occupy for us.
She does not tell us of iron lungs and hot wool wraps; instead, she sketches portraits of stoic children suffering those well-meaning remedies while attended by caring nurses and doctors who were more than aware of the limitations of their ministrations and of their inability to relieve the agonies of gravely ill children.
The Woman with the Cure is an amazing and important book. It reminds us that we know only what we think we know and that real people lie at the heart of history.
Cullen will be Georgia Writers Museum’s “Meet the Author” presenter on Tuesday, July 16, at The Plaza Arts Center at 7 p.m., after doors open at 6:30 p.m.
Tickets are $40 each, so register now and pre-order a copy of The Woman with the Cure by contacting Georgia Writers Museum online at georgiawritersmuseum.org
-Contributed by Raymond L. Atkins, 2008 Georgia Author of the Year. In 2017, he was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Georgia Writers Association.