Medic (TV Series) Breath of Life (1955) User Reviews

The March of Dimes

[kapelusznik18 · 7/10 · 15 June 2016]

Timely "Medic" episode about the terrible scourge of Polio a paralyzing illness that was sweeping the country as well as the world back then in the early 1950's with one of its many victims Dr. Robert Alan Parker,Warren Stevens,stuck or laid up in an iron lung to keep him alive. Suffering from such severe depression that had Dr. Parker not feeling like a husband or even a man tells his suffering along with him wife Catherine,Jean Willes, that he's rather be dead or even, if he could, kill himself rather then to live like this.

We see Dr. Parker and the rest of the Polio patients in his hospital ward being treated for their illness that really does nothing for them then to just keep them alive and breathing. At the end of the episode Dr. Parker with the help of Dr.Lusk, Danny Dayton, is just about able to move his fingers and almost make a fist which was about the best that he could hope for with all the treatment and medication that he was getting. The future looked bleak for Dr. Parker and all those suffering from this terrible disease but as things soon turned in real life and a short time after this "Medic" episode was broadcast that in fact there was a light at the end of this very dark tunnel!

P.S Three months after this TV broadcast the Salk/Sabin Polio vaccine came into existence that in the end just about eradicated Polio within five years and saved the lives and health of countless Americans like Dr. Parker who up until then never had any hope to live a normal life again.

Historical Insight into Ravages of Polio

[dougdoepke · 19 September 2014]

Polio was very much of a scourge at the time of this episode. The 30-minutes focuses on adjusting to the incapacities that the disease causes. We get a sense of confinement when the camera remains within the hospital wardroom with patients lined up inside their iron lungs. There's byplay between the patients, as the newly arrived Parker (Stevens) can't adjust to his new dependency on the breathing machine. Except for the byplay the dialog is pretty clinical, going through therapeutic measures to help the patients. As usual, the acting is excellent, while the human interest keeps viewers riveted, despite general lack of action.

If I recall correctly, it was ironically only several months after this January, 1955, release that the public learned of the new Salk anti-Polio Vaccine. And what a tremendous release that was for us teenagers, who lived in fear every summer of contracting the disease. Thankfully, the virus has almost disappeared over the past 60-years, but it was a real factor for older generations, while this episode effectively revisits some of those realities.