The article on the front page of the New York Times announced that the city was mobilizing to end polio with a drive to inoculate everyone under 40 in a matter of months. It was dated December 4, 1956.
Yet in July of this year, polio again reared its head in New York when an unvaccinated adult in suburban Rockland County, only six miles north of the Bronx, tested positive for the disease. Days later, the New York State Department of Health…