For Ephraim Goldfane, the morning quickly got out of hand.

It was February 1930.

Goldfane was a 34-year-old doctor in Oklahoma City.

First thing that morning, he saw a patient with a mysterious bout of paralysis.

The man stumbled in off the street, barely able to walk.

During a consultation, the man said that he had strained his legs lifting a car.

A few days later, he felt tingling in his calves.

Then the paralysis began.

If he lifted his legs, his feet drooped, the toes hanging slack.

To walk, he had to take exaggerated steps, lifting his knees extra high, then slapping his limp foot down. Goldfane suspected that the part about lifting

the car was spurious. It had nothing to do with the paralysis. But beyond that, he had no idea

where to start.

Polio can cause paralysis, but other symptoms of polio were absent in the man.

Lead poisoning also seemed a strong possibility, but the blood work came back negative.

Goldfane was still puzzling over the case when another half-paralyzed man staggered in.

The same symptoms, a spooky coincidence.

Then, incredibly, three more cases arrived over the next few hours, five cases of paralysis overall.

Goldfane was overwhelmed.

He talked to one of them in detail, a podiatrist. The podiatrist said that he had

caught the paralysis from his patients. Goldfane asked him how he knew this. The podiatrist replied,

because they all have the same symptoms. Goldfane swallowed hard. There were more? The podiatrist

pulled a list out of his pocket. It had 65

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