Paralytic illness of Franklin D. Roosevelt

Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was the president of the United States from 1933 to 1945, began experiencing symptoms of a paralytic illness in 1921 when he was 39 years old. His main symptoms were fevers; symmetric, ascending paralysis; facial paralysis; bowel and bladder dysfunction; numbness and hyperesthesia; and a descending pattern of recovery. He was diagnosed with poliomyelitis and underwent years of therapy, including hydrotherapy at Warm Springs, Georgia. Roosevelt remained paralyzed from the waist down and relied on a wheelchair and leg braces for mobility, which he took efforts to conceal in public. In 1938, he founded the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, leading to the development of polio vaccines. Although historical accounts continue to refer to Roosevelt's case as polio, the diagnosis has been questioned in the context of modern medical science, with a competing diagnosis of Guillain–Barré syndrome being proposed.

Illness and aftermath

On August 9, 1921, 39-year-old Franklin D. Roosevelt, at the time a lawyer in private practice in New York City, joined his family at their vacation home at Campobello, a Canadian island off the coast of Maine. Among those at Campobello when Roosevelt arrived were his wife, Eleanor, their children, his political aide Louis Howe, Howe's wife, and their young son. On August 10, after a day of strenuous activity, Roosevelt came down with an illness characterized by fevers, ascending paralysis, facial paralysis, prolonged bowel and bladder dysfunction, and numbness and hypersensitivity of the skin. Roosevelt came close to death from the illness.