Braces, Wheelchairs, and Iron Lungs: The Paralyzed Body and the Machinery of Rehabilitation in the Polio Epidemics
Recalling the polio epidemics of the 1940s and 1950s conjures up iconic images of March of Dimes poster children encased in heavy steel and leather braces, boys and girls confined to wheelchairs, and a few unfortunates condemned to iron lungs.
Fear of crippling was pervasive during the polio epidemics of the mid-twentieth century and this fear was reinforced by the myriad images produced by the March of Dimes to raise funds for the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis. Poster children were chosen locally and nationally to represent polio’s power to cripple and to induce Americans to give generously so that they and their children could escape the virus. Paul Longmore (1) has pointed out that these kinds of images of disabled children embody what “Americans individually and collectively fear most: limitation and dependence, failure and incapacity, loss of control, loss of autonomy, at its deepest level, confinement within the human condition, subjection to fate.” Most of these young poster children were, of course, photogenic, but they were also pictured wearing their braces, using crutches, or rising out of a wheelchair. As Jane Smith (2) has observed, “cute little kids on crutches, kids from your home town, were what opened wallets and the coin purses.” In addition, the March of Dimes arranged newspaper photographs of local children who had been helped by the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, of iron lungs being donated by companies or service organizations, and of crippled children attending special summer camps. Newsreels of the time had dramatic images of polio patients struggling to walk, typing with a mouth stick, or lying immobile in an iron lung watching the world through a tilted mirror (3). The public relations and fund-raising campaigns of the March of Dimes provided constant reminders in the forties and fifties of polio’s potential to cripple and imprison youngsters and young adults in braces, wheelchairs, and iron lungs.
To continue reading, click the button below.
Shared with permission of Muhlenburg College.