Potus Geeks Summer Reruns: Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Polio
Originally posted on September 27, 2015.
In August of 1921, when future President (and recent Vice-Presidential candidate) Franklin Delano Roosevelt was 39 years of age, he was vacationing with his family at their summer home on Campobello Island, part of the Canadian province of New Brunswick. Roosevelt suddenly became ill. He showed symptoms of fever, accompanied by paralysis of his upper and lower extremities, facial paralysis, bladder and bowel dysfunction, and dysesthesia (impairment of his sense of touch). These symptoms gradually resolved except for the paralysis of the lower extremities. Roosevelt's doctors diagnosed the illness as poliomyelitis (better known as polio). The diagnosis was made two weeks after Roosevelt's illness began.
The illness left Roosevelt with permanent paralysis from the waist down. Polio was (and still is) an incurable disease, and vaccines would not be discovered until the 1950s, after Roosevelt's death in 1945. Although there was no apparent cure for this paralysis, the ever optimistic Roosevelt tried a wide range of therapies, including hydrotherapy.
The events precipitating Roosevelt's illness may have began on August 9, 1921 when Roosevelt fell into the cold waters of the Bay of Fundy while boating. The next day, August 10, Roosevelt went sailing on the Bay of Fundy with his three oldest children. He jogged across Campobello Island, and swam in Lake Glen Severn and the Bay. Afterward, he felt tired, complained to his wife Eleanor about what he believed to be a "slight case of lumbago", and of chills. He retired early, but complained that the chills continued through the night. When he woke up the following morning one of his legs felt weak. By afternoon, that leg was paralyzed. That evening, the other leg began to weaken. Dr. E. H. Bennet, the local family physician, was called that evening. His unhelpful diagnosis was the Roosevelt had caught a cold.
The following morning, on August 12, Roosevelt could not stand. There was paralysis and numbness in both of his legs and he had painful sensitivity to touch, general aches, and a fever of 102°F. He also was unable to pass urine. Dr. Bennet reevaluated Roosevelt and sought a consultation with William W. Keen, an eminent physician vacationing nearby. The next day, August 13, Roosevelt was paralyzed from the chest down. On that day and following, his hands, arms, and shoulders were weak and he had difficulty moving his bowels
Dr. Keen saw Roosevelt the next day, on August 14. He diagnosed a blood clot in the lower spinal cord. He prescribed massage of the leg muscles, and predicted a gradual improvement over a period of months. Roosevelt continued to be unable to pass urine and required catheterization. His fever continued for the following week. On August 18 Roosevelt became delirious, causing Dr. Keen to reconsider his diagnosis. Keen now believed that the cause was possibly a lesion in the spinal cord.
On August 24, at the request of Dr. Keen, Roosevelt was seen by Dr. Robert Lovett, one of the three directors of the Harvard Infantile Paralysis Commission. He performed a lumbar puncture, a standard diagnostic procedure for infantile paralysis. The next day, Roosevelt's temperature was 100°F. Both legs were paralyzed. His back muscles were weak as were the muscles in his face and left hand. Pain in the legs and inability to urinate continued. The lumbar puncture had shown no beneficial effect on FDR's paralysis. Lovett informed Roosevelt that his findings and the lumbar puncture presented a "perfectly clear" diagnosis of poliomyelitis. Lovett ordered an end to massage and recommended that Roosevelt rest at Campobello until mid-September, and enter a New York hospital for convalescence under the care of Dr. George Draper, an expert on poliomyelitis who was coincidentally FDR's own personal physician.
On September 13, Roosevelt was strapped into a makeshift stretcher and carried downstairs by six men, beginning a long and painful journey to New York. A launch took him over the choppy waters of Passamaquoddy Bay to the railroad station at Eastport, Maine where a private railway car took him the 600 miles to Grand Central Station and a waiting ambulance. On September 15 Roosevelt was admitted to Presbyterian Hospital, at Madison Avenue and 70th Street in New York City. He continued to suffer from pain in the legs, paralysis of the legs, muscle wasting in the lower lumbar area and the buttocks, weakness of the right triceps, and gross twitching of muscles of both forearms.
Roosevelt remained in Presbyterian Hospital until October 28, when he was transferred to his house on East 65th Street. He was carried to a back bedroom on the third floor. Roosevelt's fever returned and his vision blurred. As time passed he recovered gradually from the facial paralysis, weakness in upper extremities and trunk, and regained the ability to urinate and pass waste. He also regained strength in his lower back and abdomen. But he mostly remained totally and permanently paralyzed from the waist down.
Roosevelt was able to stand only by using full-leg steel braces that locked at the knee. He had to brace himself against a lectern or other immovable object. He could walk stiffly for very short distances while using a cane in one hand and grasping someone's arm in the other.
For the rest of his life Roosevelt refused to accept that he was permanently paralyzed. He tried a wide range of therapies, but none had any effect. However he was convinced of that hydrotherapy would cure or improve his condition, and in 1926 he bought a resort at Warm Springs, Georgia, where he founded a hydrotherapy center for the treatment of polio patients. It still operates today as the Roosevelt Warm Springs Institute for Rehabilitation.
On January 3, 1938, Roosevelt founded the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, now known as the March of Dimes. The foundation sought to raise money to support research and education efforts regarding polio and other forms of paralysis. Basil O'Connor, an attorney and close associate of Roosevelt, helped establish the foundation and was its president for more than three decades. The March of Dimes later supported the work of Jonas Salk and others that led to the development of polio vaccines. Today, the organization focuses on the prevention of birth defects and infant mortality. Because he founded the March of Dimes, a dime was chosen to honor Roosevelt after his death. The Roosevelt dime was issued on January 30, 1946, on what would have been the president's 64th birthday.
Roosevelt was able to convince many people that he was in fact getting better, something he believed was crucial if he ever was to run for public office again. Privately used a wheelchair, but he was careful never to be seen in it in public, although he sometimes appeared on crutches. He usually appeared in public standing upright, while being supported on one side by an aide or by one of his sons. For major speaking occasions, a very solid lectern was placed on the stage so that he could support himself on it. In films of his speeches Roosevelt can be seen with his hands almost always gripping the lectern. He was very rarely photographed while sitting in his wheelchair, and his public appearances were choreographed to avoid the press covering his arrival and departure at public events. Whenever possible, his limousine was driven into a building's parking garage or onto a ramp for his arrivals and departures. When traveling by train, Roosevelt often appeared on the rear platform of the presidential railroad car. When he boarded or disembarked, the private car was shunted to an area of the railroad yard away from the public.
Roosevelt gave a speech to congress on March 1, 1945 about the Yalta Conference. He spoke sitting down, and said that doing so "makes it a lot easier for me not to have to carry about ten pounds of steel around on the bottom of my legs". This may have been the first time that he mentioned his disability in public.
Members of the media generally treated Roosevelt's disability as a subject they refused to comment on. News stories never mentioned it, and editorial cartoonists never caricatured his immobility. Many people, including world leaders, were unaware of his paralysis. According to David Brinkley, who was a young White House reporter during World War II, Secret Service agents actively interfered with photographers who tried to take pictures of Roosevelt in a wheelchair or from taking other pictures which displayed his disability. If a reported managed to take such a photo, the Secret Service would seize the camera and destroy any photographs they caught being taken in this manner.
It is remarkable how, during that era, Roosevelt's physical disability did not also become a political disability. As Roosevelt began to climb the political ladder, winning elections as Governor of New York in 1928 and in 1930, followed by four elections as president, Americans were never deterred by his disability. This issue never seems to have brought up during his campaigns for president and never seems to have become a problem during presidency.
In August of 1921, when future President (and recent Vice-Presidential candidate) Franklin Delano Roosevelt was 39 years of age, he was vacationing with his family at their summer home on Campobello Island, part of the Canadian province of New Brunswick. Roosevelt suddenly became ill. He showed symptoms of fever, accompanied by paralysis of his upper and lower extremities, facial paralysis, bladder and bowel dysfunction, and dysesthesia (impairment of his sense of touch). These symptoms gradually resolved except for the paralysis of the lower extremities. Roosevelt's doctors diagnosed the illness as poliomyelitis (better known as polio). The diagnosis was made two weeks after Roosevelt's illness began.
The illness left Roosevelt with permanent paralysis from the waist down. Polio was (and still is) an incurable disease, and vaccines would not be discovered until the 1950s, after Roosevelt's death in 1945. Although there was no apparent cure for this paralysis, the ever optimistic Roosevelt tried a wide range of therapies, including hydrotherapy.
The events precipitating Roosevelt's illness may have began on August 9, 1921 when Roosevelt fell into the cold waters of the Bay of Fundy while boating. The next day, August 10, Roosevelt went sailing on the Bay of Fundy with his three oldest children. He jogged across Campobello Island, and swam in Lake Glen Severn and the Bay. Afterward, he felt tired, complained to his wife Eleanor about what he believed to be a "slight case of lumbago", and of chills. He retired early, but complained that the chills continued through the night. When he woke up the following morning one of his legs felt weak. By afternoon, that leg was paralyzed. That evening, the other leg began to weaken. Dr. E. H. Bennet, the local family physician, was called that evening. His unhelpful diagnosis was the Roosevelt had caught a cold.
The following morning, on August 12, Roosevelt could not stand. There was paralysis and numbness in both of his legs and he had painful sensitivity to touch, general aches, and a fever of 102°F. He also was unable to pass urine. Dr. Bennet reevaluated Roosevelt and sought a consultation with William W. Keen, an eminent physician vacationing nearby. The next day, August 13, Roosevelt was paralyzed from the chest down. On that day and following, his hands, arms, and shoulders were weak and he had difficulty moving his bowels
Dr. Keen saw Roosevelt the next day, on August 14. He diagnosed a blood clot in the lower spinal cord. He prescribed massage of the leg muscles, and predicted a gradual improvement over a period of months. Roosevelt continued to be unable to pass urine and required catheterization. His fever continued for the following week. On August 18 Roosevelt became delirious, causing Dr. Keen to reconsider his diagnosis. Keen now believed that the cause was possibly a lesion in the spinal cord.
On August 24, at the request of Dr. Keen, Roosevelt was seen by Dr. Robert Lovett, one of the three directors of the Harvard Infantile Paralysis Commission. He performed a lumbar puncture, a standard diagnostic procedure for infantile paralysis. The next day, Roosevelt's temperature was 100°F. Both legs were paralyzed. His back muscles were weak as were the muscles in his face and left hand. Pain in the legs and inability to urinate continued. The lumbar puncture had shown no beneficial effect on FDR's paralysis. Lovett informed Roosevelt that his findings and the lumbar puncture presented a "perfectly clear" diagnosis of poliomyelitis. Lovett ordered an end to massage and recommended that Roosevelt rest at Campobello until mid-September, and enter a New York hospital for convalescence under the care of Dr. George Draper, an expert on poliomyelitis who was coincidentally FDR's own personal physician.
On September 13, Roosevelt was strapped into a makeshift stretcher and carried downstairs by six men, beginning a long and painful journey to New York. A launch took him over the choppy waters of Passamaquoddy Bay to the railroad station at Eastport, Maine where a private railway car took him the 600 miles to Grand Central Station and a waiting ambulance. On September 15 Roosevelt was admitted to Presbyterian Hospital, at Madison Avenue and 70th Street in New York City. He continued to suffer from pain in the legs, paralysis of the legs, muscle wasting in the lower lumbar area and the buttocks, weakness of the right triceps, and gross twitching of muscles of both forearms.
Roosevelt remained in Presbyterian Hospital until October 28, when he was transferred to his house on East 65th Street. He was carried to a back bedroom on the third floor. Roosevelt's fever returned and his vision blurred. As time passed he recovered gradually from the facial paralysis, weakness in upper extremities and trunk, and regained the ability to urinate and pass waste. He also regained strength in his lower back and abdomen. But he mostly remained totally and permanently paralyzed from the waist down.
Roosevelt was able to stand only by using full-leg steel braces that locked at the knee. He had to brace himself against a lectern or other immovable object. He could walk stiffly for very short distances while using a cane in one hand and grasping someone's arm in the other.
For the rest of his life Roosevelt refused to accept that he was permanently paralyzed. He tried a wide range of therapies, but none had any effect. However he was convinced of that hydrotherapy would cure or improve his condition, and in 1926 he bought a resort at Warm Springs, Georgia, where he founded a hydrotherapy center for the treatment of polio patients. It still operates today as the Roosevelt Warm Springs Institute for Rehabilitation.
On January 3, 1938, Roosevelt founded the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, now known as the March of Dimes. The foundation sought to raise money to support research and education efforts regarding polio and other forms of paralysis. Basil O'Connor, an attorney and close associate of Roosevelt, helped establish the foundation and was its president for more than three decades. The March of Dimes later supported the work of Jonas Salk and others that led to the development of polio vaccines. Today, the organization focuses on the prevention of birth defects and infant mortality. Because he founded the March of Dimes, a dime was chosen to honor Roosevelt after his death. The Roosevelt dime was issued on January 30, 1946, on what would have been the president's 64th birthday.
Roosevelt was able to convince many people that he was in fact getting better, something he believed was crucial if he ever was to run for public office again. Privately used a wheelchair, but he was careful never to be seen in it in public, although he sometimes appeared on crutches. He usually appeared in public standing upright, while being supported on one side by an aide or by one of his sons. For major speaking occasions, a very solid lectern was placed on the stage so that he could support himself on it. In films of his speeches Roosevelt can be seen with his hands almost always gripping the lectern. He was very rarely photographed while sitting in his wheelchair, and his public appearances were choreographed to avoid the press covering his arrival and departure at public events. Whenever possible, his limousine was driven into a building's parking garage or onto a ramp for his arrivals and departures. When traveling by train, Roosevelt often appeared on the rear platform of the presidential railroad car. When he boarded or disembarked, the private car was shunted to an area of the railroad yard away from the public.
Roosevelt gave a speech to congress on March 1, 1945 about the Yalta Conference. He spoke sitting down, and said that doing so "makes it a lot easier for me not to have to carry about ten pounds of steel around on the bottom of my legs". This may have been the first time that he mentioned his disability in public.
Members of the media generally treated Roosevelt's disability as a subject they refused to comment on. News stories never mentioned it, and editorial cartoonists never caricatured his immobility. Many people, including world leaders, were unaware of his paralysis. According to David Brinkley, who was a young White House reporter during World War II, Secret Service agents actively interfered with photographers who tried to take pictures of Roosevelt in a wheelchair or from taking other pictures which displayed his disability. If a reported managed to take such a photo, the Secret Service would seize the camera and destroy any photographs they caught being taken in this manner.
It is remarkable how, during that era, Roosevelt's physical disability did not also become a political disability. As Roosevelt began to climb the political ladder, winning elections as Governor of New York in 1928 and in 1930, followed by four elections as president, Americans were never deterred by his disability. This issue never seems to have brought up during his campaigns for president and never seems to have become a problem during presidency.