Donald Elzinga and Bea Anderson Oral History Interview, 1997

Bea Anderson, who was a nurse during polio epidemics in Marquette County in the 1940s and 1950s, discusses polio treatments, working conditions for nurses, patient-nurse ratios, dealing with a lack of protective equipment and medical supplies, efforts to avoid contagion, hand-pumping iron lungs when the power went out, the disproportionate nature of the epidemics in the Upper Peninsula, the challenges of rural health care, and changes in medicine and medical insurance over the course of her career. Donald Elzinga, a doctor and the son of a doctor of the same name who was the first orthopedics specialist in the Upper Peninsula, also chimes in with his childhood memories of the epidemics and information about polio treatments, symptoms, and recovery rates.