Polio Across the Iron Curtain: Hungary's Cold War with an Epidemic

Dóra Vargha

doi:10.1017/9781108355421

Polio Across the Iron Curtain

Hungary's Cold War with an Epidemic

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Dóra Vargha, University of Exeter

Publisher:: Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:: October 2018
Print publication year:: 2018
Online ISBN:: 9781108355421
DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108355421
Creative Commons:: This content is Open Access and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/creativelicenses

Subjects:: Area Studies, Twentieth Century European History, History, European Studies, History of Medicine
Series:: Global Health Histories

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By the end of the 1950s, Hungary became an unlikely leader in what we now call global health. Only three years after Soviet tanks crushed the revolution of 1956, Hungary became one of the first countries to introduce the Sabin vaccine into its national vaccination programme. This immunization campaign was built on years of scientific collaboration between East and West, in which scientists, specimens, vaccines and iron lungs crossed over the Iron Curtain. Dóra Vargha uses a series of polio epidemics in communist Hungary to understand the response to a global public health emergency in the midst of the Cold War. She argues that despite the antagonistic international atmosphere of the 1950s, spaces of transnational corporation between blocs emerged to tackle a common health crisis. At the same time, she shows that epidemic concepts and policies were influenced by the very Cold War rhetoric that medical and political cooperation transcended. This title is also available as Open Access.

Winner, European Association for the History of Medicine and Health (EAHMH) Book Award, 2019

Winner, 2020 Medical Humanities Award, Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the Wellcome Trust

Advance praise:‘Vargha makes a major contribution to historical studies on medicine and the Cold War by examining the fascinating interaction between new local, national and global actors. Her sound interpretations go beyond Hungary and Eastern Europe and illuminate how authority is constructed and contested in the relationship between patients and physicians and the key role of disease control programs in national modernization projects.'

Marcos Cueto - Casa de Oswaldo Cruz, Fiocruz, Rio de Janeiro

Advance praise:‘Polio Across the Iron Curtain is a superb study of the significance of disability for state and nation. Vargha's excellent history of Cold War medicine, technology, and public health reveals interstitial sites of cooperation and exchange in the shadow of the superpowers, thereby offering an important rethinking of the history of global health.'

Julie Livingston - New York University

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Polio Across the Iron Curtain

Hungary's Cold War with an Epidemic

This Book has been cited by the following publications. This list is generated based on data provided by Crossref.

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Contents

Polio Across the Iron Curtain
pp i-i

Global Health Histories - Series page
pp ii-ii

Polio Across the Iron Curtain - Title page
pp iii-iii

Copyright page
pp iv-iv

Dedication
pp v-vi

Contents
pp vii-vii

List of Figures
pp viii-viii

Acknowledgements
pp ix-xii

Introduction
pp 1-18

1 - The Power of Polio
pp 19-51

2 - Iron Curtain, Iron Lungs
pp 52-78

3 - Unlikely Allies
pp 79-112

4 - Local Failure in a Global Success
pp 113-146

5 - Sabin Saves the Day
pp 147-179

6 - After the End of Polio
pp 180-205

Conclusion: Eastern Europe in Global Health History
pp 206-211

Archives and Collections
pp 212-212

Interviewees
pp 213-213

Bibliography
pp 214-248

Index
pp 249-254

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Polio Across the Iron Curtain

Hungary's Cold War with an Epidemic

Book description

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