Kisv\u00e1rda, Hungary, 1954. The summer night was warm, the road outside deserted. No one drove any more unless they were secret police or favoured by the Party. Inside, Ir\u00e9n and J\u00e1nos Vargha sat watching their two-year-old son\u2019s eyelids as he slept through his fever. The only visible sign of the attack, they were told, would be if Gy\u00f6rgy\u2019s eyeballs started moving rapidly.<\/p>\n
Polio was unpredictable. Often no more harmful than any other childhood infection, it could on occasion \u2018turn\u2019 with swift, inexplicable savagery, destroying a child\u2019s nerve cells and leaving him paralysed for life. If it damaged the nerves controlling his lungs they could freeze up and Gy\u00f6rgy would either die or spend the rest of his life inside an iron lung that breathed for him.<\/p>\n
The hours crept by without him showing any symptoms of paralytic polio, but the next morning, as Ir\u00e9n stood him on the table to get him dressed, his legs buckled. She stood him up again \u2013 again his legs wouldn\u2019t support him. This moment is his earliest childhood memory. \u201cI could stand easily before,\u201d he says. \u201cNow I could still bend my legs but I couldn\u2019t straighten them. For me it was astonishing and interesting that my legs were doing that strange thing. But my mother was afraid.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gy\u00f6rgy was rushed 100 km to the hospital in Debrecen. Then began the frantic search for gamma globulin. The antibody-rich solution was the only medicine then known to have some ability to disarm the poliovirus in the bloodstream, preventing it from invading the nerves. But gamma globulin was scarce. Ir\u00e9n and J\u00e1nos rode from town to town and village to village on their motorbike, pharmacist after pharmacist regretfully shaking their heads.<\/p>\n