President Roosevelt and Polio.

Of all the major ills that still plagued Americans in the 1930s, polio became a community rallying point and an urgent subject for medical research. Polio was an enemy that struck the nation's young in a vicious manner, often paralyzing or crippling victims for life, if it was not fatal. The nation's first citizen was its foremost victim. In 1938 not all Americans knew that their president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was a paraplegic, a crippled victim of poliomyelitis. Roosevelt disguised his paralysis with strong steel braces on his paralyzed legs when he had to stand and often appeared seated in open-topped automobiles where the crowds could not see his disability. He was only photographed in a wheelchair once during his entire political career. But the story of his apparent "victory" over the...