In 1953 Dr. Max J. Fox and Irvin Moskowitz reported in the Wisconsin Medical Journal that as many as one-third of the patients admitted to hospital for treatment as polio victims only feared they had the disease. These so-called (hysterical paralytics typically exhibited a morbid interest in poliomyelitis and suffered the symptoms of the disease without any physical cause. Sypmtoms usually disappeared when the patient was assured that he or she was disease-free. Often psychological care was recommended.

Even when there were clearly physical causes of polio-like symptoms, diagnosis was uncertain in the early 1950s.The Southwestern Poliomyelitis Center in Houston reported that about one in six patients diagnosed as having polio suffered instead from another, less serious disease. The reason was that doctors, who were taught in medical school that it is better to be safe than sorry in diagnoses, were reluctant to rule...