It’s the Dundee epidemic that claimed one life, ruined others — and it’s largely forgotten.
And this wasn’t back in the grim Victorian days when typhus festered in the grimy tenements.
This was 1962 and it was polio.
It’s highly infectious and, while it mainly affects young children, anyone who hasn’t been immunised is at risk.
The first you’d know would be a fever, headache, vomiting, stiffness in the neck and pain in the limbs.
In a small number of cases it can cause paralysis, and it can kill. And there’s still no cure.
The Evening Telegraph took a look back at how Dundee was hit by the disease as it emerged that health experts believe it could finally be eradicated across the world by 2020 with vaccinations for every person.
During Dundee’s outbreak, some survivors took years to recover, were often left disabled with withered limbs and would spend the rest of their lives walking painfully with a leg-brace.
In 1947, an epidemic in Dundee had affected 43 and killed four. Polio struck the city again in 1950 and caused another nine deaths.
It was early June 1962 when the last polio epidemic struck Dundee. By this time the new Sabin vaccine was available and the people clamoured for it.
The epidemic centred on Fintry, but affected Douglas and Maryfield as it spread and claimed the life of 38-year-old George Craigie from Fintry Mains.
He worked as a driver for the Post Office and was admitted to Kings Cross Hospital on a Sunday evening, but never recovered. A host of events were cancelled and Dundee Boy Scouts, due to camp in Auchterarder, were asked to stay away.
Within days of the alarm being raised, 75,000 people had queued for a sugar-lump coated with the vaccine.
The Nelson Street and Forester Street clinics were mobbed, Macalpine Road School was opened especially for an evening on June 27 and 3,400people turned up for their vaccine, with the public being advised to get three separate doses.
The average number of people being dealt with at Dundee clinics was 1,200 to 1,500 per hour — and the ‘record’, noted the Tele, was 3,392 in two hours. This was genuine panic.
Throughout Dundee, the urgent medical advice was simply to wash your hands properly as the Tele printed details of special openings of clinics.
Even across the river in Fife, authorities looked on in alarm and swiftly started immunising the Kingdom’s children — indeed, anyone under the age of 40 could get the vaccine if they wanted.
The response by medical authorities was swift and effective and undoubtedly lessened the impact of the outbreak.
Polio just wasn’t in the news at the start of June and by early July the outbreak had effectively fizzled out — the whole thing had lasted a few head-spinning weeks.
By July 9, the Tele’s headline was all about the start of the Open at Troon. At the bottom of the page, however, there were reports of new polio cases in Glasgow.
To this day, there’s no real cure and 120,000 people in the UK have to live with the results of polio.