You can search photos that were taken for LIFE magazine and other Time Inc. publications from the 19th century to the 1970s via a Google-powered search engine at images.google.com/hosted/life. The Web page says: "Search millions of photographs from the LIFE photo archive, stretching from the 1750s to today. Most were never published and are now available for the first time through the joint work of LIFE and Google."It's a fantastic resource for historic images of disability. I searched using the word "polio" and found 200 photos, like this one. It also has the original captions on the photos so you can see the language used about disability throughout history.
In this 1948 picture, the caption reads: "David Henseley, young child crippled by polio with both legs in braces, soliciting funds in public fund-raising driver for a new polio hospital."