Article ID: CBB000931891

And They Shall Walk: Ideal Versus Reality in Polio Rehabilitation in the United States (2009)

unapi

This essay explores the significance that rehabilitation physicians and polio patients in the United States put on recovering the ability to walk. Polio often paralyzed or severely weakned the legs of those who contracted the disease. Regaining the ability to walk was thus a sgnificant measure of recovery from the disease. However, walking meant more than the physical act itself. Regaining the ability to walk meant, in a symbolic sense, that one was no longer disabled, that one had again become normal. This attitude was shared by rehabilitation specialists and patients alike. This essay examines this attitude and the cultural values it embodied through a study of the efforts of selected polio survivors to learn to walk again and of the rehabilitation literature that held walking as an ideal. It also explores what happened when polio patients were unable to walk again because of the severity of their paralysis. KEY WORDS: Polio. Poliomyelitis. Rehabilitación. Disability. Paralysis. Wheelchairs.

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Authors & Contributors
M. Kemal Temel
Marcin Stasiak
Nair, Aparna
Paul R. Lawrie
Vargha, Dora
Turner, David M.
Concepts
Public health
Disabilities; disability; accessibility
Medicine and society
Poliomyelitis
Public understanding of medicine
Rehabilitation
Time Periods
20th century, early
20th century
19th century
Early modern
21st century
20th century, late
Places
United States
Great Britain
Spain
India
Istanbul (Turkey)
Georgia (U.S.)
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