In a letter to Dr. Egleston, a physician from Hartsville, South Carolina, Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) details his experience with polio including his symptoms, diagnosis, care, and treatment recommendations.
Though called infantile paralysis for the disease’s prevalence among young children, Roosevelt contracted polio in 1921 at the age of thirty-nine, paralyzing the future president from the waist down.
As demonstrated by the letter, after falling ill with polio, FDR worked tirelessly towards his own recovery and assisted others afflicted with the virus. His efforts included founding and then fundraising for the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, better known as March of Dimes, an organization that provided funding for the research and development of Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine.
