We didn’t have a working vaccine until the mid 1950s. I was born after the polio epidemics of the 1950s, but I knew kids who were a few years older than me that were not so lucky.
I was born in 1950 and got the real vaccine. I remember a grade school friend that had polio. Had to wear leg braces.
My mom, who was born in 1935, spent a year of her life in the hospital battling polio. She underwent the Sister Kenny treatments, which she described as very painful. There, she met my future mother-in-law and they became life-long friends.
She fought her way through it but there were kids who refused the treatments and were disabled for the rest of their lives.