Jonas Salk licensed the first polio vaccine in 1955, to the relief of a nation. A nation that had lived through two world wars, a great depression, a president struck by polio and thousands of deaths from the disease. Since the first polio epidemic in 1916, the public's and scientists' ideas about polio were limited. From 1916 until the creation of a working vaccine in the 1950s, the stigma surrounding polio grew and changed numerous times. This public perception made polio the most serious disease in the United States for nearly 40 years, while many other diseases killed more people. The limited knowledge of polio in the beginning, the fact that polio struck while the United States was at the height of an obsession with sanitation, while at the same time associating the disease with being unclean, and the nature of the disease that it only affected young children at first only created and contributed to the mystery and panic surrounding the disease. The public and scientific perception that created the enduring image of polio changed dramatically from the first major epidemic in the United States in 1916 to the ten years from 1945 to 1955 and finally in the period immediately following the creation of the polio vaccine in 1955. polio, also known as polio is an intestinal infection that spreads “from person to person through contact with… unwashed hands, shared objects, contaminated food and water.” Symptoms are often mild, including headache and nausea, however around 1 in 100 cases can lead to the virus invading “the brainstem and central nervous system” and “destroying nerve cells”. In other words, the disease causes paralysis in 1 in 100 victims. Polio has reached epidemic proportions for the first time... middle of paper... in the United States. In 1988 the Pan American Health Organization “announced a campaign to defeat polio. eradication in the Americas by 1990…polio will be eradicated from the region four years later.” the magnificent and terrifying polio virus had finally disappeared. In the United States the polio virus was largely a creation of public perception. The first epidemic in 1916 and the circumstances surrounding it caused the disease to grow in the public mind and create fear and panic. In subsequent years, fear of the disease would grow only in part due to the creation of large-scale philanthropic research and the failure of science and big American government to create a vaccine. When a vaccine was finally created, the public relief was like nothing had ever been felt before.”